What a whirlwind few months it has been. From wrapping up jobs to saying goodbye to friends to packing this life into a 2001 Honda CRV and hitting the road, it's been an emotional roller coaster ride, and that was before the physical ride itself.
When the day to leave finally came, 18 hours of driving, one overnight stop in Union City, IN, and entirely uncharted territory waiting for me in Johnson City, TN was what lay ahead.
Well, I'm alive, but it wasn't without some, let's call them new, experiences along the way.
It started out like this:
That's clearly me in the foreground, what's behind me can only be classified as a pile of crap. All my stuff, stacked to the ceiling of my car, and what you see is about what I saw in my rear-view mirror the entire ride down - very little of the road. But hey, didn't have much of a choice, it's not like you can just take some stuff out to make sure you can see through your back window, then come back and make a second trip. There was no turning back and no room to spare, all I could do was cross my fingers I didn't get pulled over and hope all my stuff would act as an air bag if I got in an accident.
So with that scene inside the red box I was driving (mine is not nearly as picturesque as the one linked above), I set out at 7am Wednesday, May 31. I did, though, have to make one quick stop before I skipped town:
A bon voyage to the state I've lived in for the first 28 years of my life. Is that a real deer? Why is it there, in the picture, and what does it mean to me? Good questions.
Anyway, with that final stop on the border, I forged into Wisconsin and settled in for the long ride ahead. A surprising note - Western Wisconsin is really pretty. I know as someone from Minnesota I'm supposed to hate Wisconsin and I know as a man I'm not supposed to use the word pretty, but it's all happening isn't it?
Yes, I'm happy about Western Wisconsin, but my god was the rest of the midwest just awful. East/South Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana are flat, empty, and a total nightmare to drive through. I kept things interesting with Katy Perry and Rick Ross Pandora stations and by stopping roughly once every two hours to avoid driving my car into a ditch out of boredom, but without those little nuggets of positivity, me and Tennessee may have never met.
I'm getting towards the end of day one, driving through the middle of Indiana on what they apparently classify as a highway, and, being of this constantly-connected/ADD generation that I am, I feel the need to stop and hop on the internet to have some time to sit and have a little normalcy on this completely abnormal day.
I look for a coffee shop.
Didn't seem like a crazy idea at the time, but being a city slicker as I am, I didn't even consider that coffee apparently hasn't made it to some parts of the country yet. I'm about to give up when I realize that all of these tiny towns in America's Heartland have one thing in common: don't vomit...
Mcdonald's.
OK, I love Mcdonald's and so do you, no one is going to vomit and we might order a few Mcdoubles while on the subject, but I never even considered it being a place to go for Wi-Fi. Lo and behold, Mcdonald's is the Coffee Shop of small town America.
We are so fat.
I stop, satisfy my bodily function of needing to be on the internet at least an hour per day, and soldier on to my checkpoint - Grandma's house.
She's a great lady, hadn't seen her in six years, and she took me to her two favorite spots in Union City that she said were world famous, one for dinner, one for breakfast.
The food was terrible. It was great to see her.
Day two got significantly dicier, but exponentially more beautiful.
Hit the road around 11AM (we've crossed over into ET at this point) and headed into Ohio, down through Cincinnati, and into Kentucky.
Surprised again on this end, because Kentucky is perhaps the most beautiful place I've ever seen. You can make fun of me and say I don't travel a lot, am uncultured, and should stop and buy a trailer in Kentucky because that's where I belong, and maybe you're right and MAYBE I WILL.
While Kentucky's mountains and forests and endless hills were fantastic, the state also brought drama, as I hit torrential rains for a good four hours of the eight hour drive, and when my tiny little car that was carrying 700 extra pounds of stuff wasn't getting massacred by the elements and trying to fight up the steep inclines, it was witness to someone trying to jump out of a car 100 yards ahead of us at 60MPH after I nearly rear-ended someone five minutes earlier.
I was a little on edge right about then, but an exit for "Big Bone Lick State Park" lightened the mood, and a clever Taco Bell brought me all the way back to even with a sign telling potential customers to:
"Come Get Naked.....
Chicken Chips."
Well played Taco Bell, and I might just do both.
Only two stops were needed on the second day, and I coasted into Johnson City around 7pm, heading to the housing office at ETSU (after a good 30 minutes of trying to figure out where to go), getting my keys, and heading up to my new apartment at Buc Ridge on campus. I had never seen the place before, which had me a tiny bit nervous even though that was the case with my three previous residence, but I quickly made the statement that it is the nicest place I've ever lived, keeping in mind I've lived in some real trash holes (but in all seriousness, extremely thankful for the space and how ETSU has taken care of me down here so far):
So the two-day journey to this two-year journey was a success, and while I get lost going literally everywhere, even the bathroom in my apartment (not really, but kind of), and feel completely inept because I can't do simple things like open my PO box without help, those struggles have been evened out by completing my first week at work for the Bucs in which I helped our Sports Information department put together a presentation for Athletic Director Richard "Doc" Sander, and finished up team sheets of the squads we'll be covering this coming year on the broadcast side.
On the 22nd of June, I'll begin my other job as Elizabethton Twins play-by-play man, covering 53 of the 68 games for the E-Twins, and things will really kick into high gear!
Before I let you continue with your day, I want to make sure to call out the support of my friends, family, and colleagues over these few weeks leading up to leaving Minneapolis, and the first week I've been here, as a huge difference maker. It has made this transition so much easier, and I'm incredibly lucky to be surrounded by their care and positivity.
Don't stray too far, as I'll have updates periodically on my work with Elizabethton, ETSU, and everything else that may come up.
See you at Taco Bell naked for some chicken chips!