It has begun! Mark and Val’s Excellent Adventure: Road Trip to San Francisco is a go!
Left from Kitchener at about 11:30AM. After a quick stop in London to pick up a couple of things we foolishly trusted the GPS system to guide us.
We set the GPS to get us to Flint, MI; the GPS figured the best route was to go via Buffalo. Of couse, when we noticed this, we paid it no attention and continued to Sarnia/Port Huron. However, the GPS could not be pursuaded; after each exit we passed, it recalculated a new route that was the same every time: pull a U-turn at the next exit, drive to Buffalo, and then turn around and head for Flint.
Unfortunately, the system didn’t improve much once we crossed the border either. Its latest bright idea was that we should drive through Detroit to get to Flint, rather than take the straight and uninterrupted route via I-69. I am seriously concerned about when we enter parts of the States where I haven’t been.
Crossing the border was relatively uneventful. We waved a bunch of pages with signatures on them around while customs officials looked for fruit and yogurt stashed in between our laptops and our clothes. We did arrive right when our officer was about to change his shift though, so when the computer system froze up half way through processing us he got tagged out by a seemingly more attractive and experienced one.
Finally, we stopped in Flint to pick up my new Peek, which turned out to cost a fraction of what I expected; I’m pretty sure it’s an older model, which is fine by me. Our hotel appears to be a T-Mobile deadzone though, much to my chagrin.
Now we’ve stopped in Kalamazoo, MI for the night, mostly because I like the name. According to Val, that’s about 1/6 of the way, which is not bad for a half-day of driving with delays crossing the border. I took some pictures today, but I left the photo cable in my big luggage; hopefully I’ll remember to dig it out tomorrow and transfer some photos.
Anyway, I’m off to contact people I’m supposed to contact, blah, blah, blah. Sleep eventually. Stay tuned tomorrow for more updates–from on the road if I can get my Peek to work correctly!
//Mark