I’m pretty burned out but super glad to be home. Yesterday we drove 13 hours to Butte, and then today we had just over 12 hours of driving (almost all of it on I90 from Butte to our home in Bellingham. A few stats – we averaged 24-25mpg in the Honda Odyssey (it has the “Eco” feature that turns off 3 cylinders when cruising), during our 1522.5 miles these past two days. There were vast sections of North Dakota and Montana where we were in cruise control, locked in at 82mph. Most expensive gas we saw was in Washington State today – $4.49 for regular unleaded. Wierdest thing to me was that Super is cheaper than Regular in North Dakota! Super has 10% Ethanol so it’s cheaper… (took me a bit of reading the gas pump to figure that one out)
All in all, it was worth the time, expense, and hassle. I got to meet (Kelly’s Mother) Virginia’s family – good german stock. (The Eggl’s) And Augustus and I got to go on a Farm Tour with Kelly’s Uncle Jocky Haus – and see his 10 quarters of Soybeans, Flax, and Wheat. It’s amazingly machinery intensive now to Farm – and it was fun for me to recall my Agricultural Economics classes from UC Davis in college. (They didn’t have a Business degree for Undergraduates – so we studied Managerial and Agricultural Economics – that’s why I have a BS in Ag Econ). One of the best parts of getting that degree was taking Tractor Driving as a 1 credit elective (Saturday mornings at 8am). That 20 year old memory came flooding back – as my son got to climb up on a big John Deere tractor and pretend to drive it.
We also had a spectacular fireworks show and bonfire on Saturday night – out on the farm where Virginia was raised. That was my favorite food of North Dakota – Brats and Smores from the campfire. The hot dishes we had at the Armory for three days got a bit tiring for this Northwesterner – though we did have GREAT pies there. Now I need to work off all that food… Most of all though, Kelly got to reconnect with her family and our kids had a ball playing with cousins galore – and had an incredible adventure.
Our kids were amazingly good despite this video of Dorothy – over 50 hours of driving in a weeks time – and although there was some crying and yelling (“unbuckle me” was sung a few times too) it could have been far, far worse. I remember making big road trips growing up, but we didn’t wear seatbelts then – and us kids roamed all over the Station Wagon – playing grab-ass is what my Dad called it. It’s a far different experience when they’re trapped in place, even if we have DVD’s for them to watch. No fun!
Good to be home, now lots of work to do before flying to Texas on Saturday for WPC. I’ll be webcasting our HTG All Peer Group meeting on Sunday (with TCC doing the camera work) and then working with Pat Dolan and Al Bias all next week doing video blogging at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston. Come back to VARvid frequently next week as we’ll be posting new videos at least twice a day during WPC.
