Skip to main content

Look Out Southwest Virginia, Here We Come: Day 1 Of My Cross-Country Road Trip

So, I have big news. I haven’t told a ton of people, but I am moving to Chula Vista. USA Rugby is starting a residency program for 15s players and I was one of the first five to be invited to that. Of course, I accepted the invite, and now I am moving my life to the west coast. After talking with friends who live or have lived in Chula, I decided that I’d like to have a car there, so I’ve convinced my mom and her husband, Merle to accompany me in trekking across the country.

Obviously this is a wonderful opportunity for me to improve my game and get in quality training with the women I play with on the National team—something that doesn’t happen a lot in the US. However, I am very close to my family, so moving ~2,800 miles away will be difficult. This cross-country journey will be a good chance to spend some quality time with my mom before I am no longer a few hours away. I thought I’d chronicle our trip in a few blogs, so that in years to come we could read them and activate our little nostalgic heart strings, and in case any of my friends and family were interested in our adventures.

We started our journey yesterday evening, leaving Buckingham, VA and traveling to Fincastle (near Roanoke) to spend the night with my aunt, Rhonda. We’ve done that trip about a hundred times. As always, it was a beautiful drive through the hills and mountains of Virginia, but there was nothing new to see or eventful that happened, with the exception of most of the boxes in my car toppling onto my mom when Merle made a fairly sharp left turn. Seems the most treacherous part of our journey has proven to be inside the car. To ensure mom’s survival, we’ve since strapped the boxes to the seat.

Since we made such good progress on the first day (~100 miles in the book, ~2,700 more to go!), my aunt Rhonda treated us to a delicious dinner—crab cakes, shrimp cocktail, pickled beets, sweet potato salad, corn on the cob, her family-famous broccoli casserole and a grilled peach with ricotta cheese and honey dessert. With such progress made, my uncle Bill, through his big grin remarked that we’d probably make Bristol, VA by today’s end and California by October.

While we didn’t make it out of Virginia on our first day, we got ourselves started, and I had a chance to visit with my aunt and uncle before there are 6 or 7 states between us. I also learned from Uncle Bill that genetic testing has revealed that Michael Phelps’ father is indeed a dolphin, and I picked up a wonderfully Southern phrase from Aunt Rhonda—“He/she sits too close to the biscuit.” All in all, a great first day.

Today, with a good night’s sleep under our belts, bellies full of bacon and fresh fruit, and well wishes from my awesome aunt and uncle, we set out again. Onward to Bristol!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dipping Our Feet In The Pacific Ocean: Day 6, On Which Our Journey Comes To An End

We woke up to a clear and sunny day in Seligman. In the parking lot and around the grounds of the Deluxe Inn, a few stray cats roam. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get them to come and say “hi” to me. The best I could do was get within sniffing distance of the smallest before it climbed the side of the motel and disappeared into the roof. We ate, yesterday morning, at the Roadkill Café. Their breakfast sandwiches were enormous and pretty damned tasty, according to Mom and Merle. I had the chorizo plate, which I turned into a chorizo burrito that Mom said looked like a baby (Amy, if you’re reading, I ate a baby…well, half of it). With no sightseeing planned for the day, and only about 6.5 hours left in the trip, we decided to take the scenic route to get a taste of the desert climate. Mom wanted to see cacti and not the kind you see in folks’ yards back home. I was definitely up for it, because I wanted to see a roadrunner (added that one to the list a little late in the trip). We
Post a Comment
Read more

"Project 52" & The Fun In Getting Lost: Day 3 Of Our Coast To Coast Excursion

Yesterday we picked up where we left off, traveling about 700 miles by 5pm. About 90% of our drive was through Kansas, and if you’re not the curious sort, that drive can get quite boring. However, if you have an inquisitive mind, then it can be quite interesting. Mom spent a good deal of the drive looking up facts and fighting her contacts to do so (at one point she exclaimed, “I think my eyes are quitting on me.”). Our conversations ranged from the differences in milo and sorghum, what constitutes a shelter belt versus a wind break, which state has the most tornadoes on average per year (it’s Oklahoma), what was Dorothy Gale’s hometown (Liberal, KS), and where in the world can we see buffalo. And one thing that gave me a little bit of giddy pleasure was saying, “Well, I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore,” upon entering Colorado. The Kansas landscape is a flat, bucolic one, full of fields of milo, wheat, soybean, corn, wind turbines, and small oil rigs. The state’s nickname is the sunf
Post a Comment
Read more

This Is My Job?!?!

Thanksgiving is typically the holiday in which we practice being thankful/grateful. I like to practice gratefulness every day. Today, as I'm traveling home for the holidays, the most obvious thing for which I am grateful is that I will see my family in another few hours. I've missed them terribly since moving to San Diego, and this will be the first time in months I will see some of them (I was able to see my mom and aunt last month). Of course I could wax poetic for an entire blog about my family, but I wanted to touch on something else--my gratefulness for the place which I'm leaving. San Diego grew on me quickly, like some sort of sea-salt chia pet. I've enjoyed the culture, the people, my new team (the Surfers), and the "vibe." And I've enjoyed my job. I'm not talking about my new job at the UFC Gym (but let me tell you, that place is badass). I'm referring to my job as a rugby player. I'm talking about waking up, every day, and going in to
Post a Comment
Read more