Leg 2 (part A): Day 1 (35): Somewhere in Virginia

Boy are we behind...about 2 weeks to be exact...in our blogging. So forgive me as I try to catch up! Let's start essentially where we left, or left off anyway.

We have set off on our journey once again.

We decided to take the car this time for a variety of reasons. We were headed east to a wedding that Devin was in, which meant we were traveling with nice clothes and a gift. The weather forecast was also iffy. We were also not prepared to take the bike since we didn’t have much time between trips to purchase new riding gear and without bags the bike is just too loud to really ride for very long. We didn’t ride when we were home. It took several weeks before he was even able to find time to clean it (which took about 8 hours) and do maintenance. The insurance came through pretty quickly and Devin was able to order replacements of a lot of stolen items. The hotel never did come through with video of the incident.

In the time we were home we accomplished a lot, heading up a collection/purchasing of items to go to homeless veterans. We had 3 days for that and made up over 125 bags. We had a TON of help from Trico Elementary School, whose teachers donated a lot of money and items. For short notice it was really impressive. We also took on a very important sewing project.

Eventually we got back on the road. We were running a lot later than we wanted to but we had a lot to take care of before we left. We were finishing up that very important sewing project in addition to packing, preparing my work for vacation, and all the other things that come with leaving.

So let me sidetrack to our very important sewing project. I’ve always wanted to make a quilt, and when our dear friends told us they were getting married I thought it was the perfect opportunity. Devin was on board, so I found an easy pattern, used the expertise at our local sewing shop (Calico Country) to purchase fabrics, and we made a quilt! I say WE with emphasis because Devin really did half the work. He cut, ironed, sewed, pinned, quilted… We used the colors of their wedding, purple and peachy-orange. We had so much fun that we are already planning our next one! It was insane to think that we could make a quilt in 3 weeks but we did. And actually when you figure up actual work time it was much less than 3 weeks. Having two people was much more efficient. Here’s the process & final product:

On our way out of town we stopped to say bye to our family and showed off our quilt at the quilt shop (all the ladies in there were squealing with excitement). As we traveled I worked on the computer. We just kept going until we were tired…which was about 2 a.m.  It didn’t make sense to get a hotel so late so we moved some things around in the back of the car, pulled out pillows, and slept at a rest area. Now I know that makes a lot of people nervous, but we felt safe with the number of cars and security around. This is the back of the car after we packed it all back up the next morning.Yep. We slept in there.

And this is Mini-B & Devin tired of me taking pictures and ready to get on the road.

We forgot to keep track of our miles, but it was a lot. So for this leg we traveled a lot of miles across America for a total of a lot of miles across America.