best first day ever!
okay, a quick rundown of the first driving day of our trip. buzzing from bullhead city, az to colorado springs should have taken about 13 hours (according to mapquest). 15 hours in, we realized there was a slight disparity between mapquest, our gps, and the reality of pee breaks, tourist traps, and faulty credit cards. an added bonus was the hour we forgot to include for the time change. so when we found a kind soul willing to put us up for the night, we were pretty overjoyed.
deciding that i didnt want to be any later absolutely necessary, i was pretty much taking the beautiful colorado mountains at a hellish pace, which the white knuckles of my teammates can attest to. okay, maybe not SO bad, but leeann leadfoot IS my new moniker. as i came into a small town, i thought, “oh, probably some black & whites around, should slow it down”. the flashing lights in my mirror said the same. fortunately the cop was a gem, and although he still ticketed me with a minor infraction, he could have done much worse. he was actually apologizing for having to give me a ticket, but had already called it in as per procedure when the driver is going *cough 25mph cough* over the speed limit. and to make it that much sweeter, when we got out of the mountains the text came in that our contact bailed, and no need to rush, because we had no place to sleep anyway.
this leads us to the 7-11 like a block away from the screening the next day. being a former EMT, i started chatting up the paramedics that were hanging out at 2 am. they told us they knew a great place to park and get some sleep, so we followed the ambulance to a nice secluded spot. yeah, a nice secluded spot to hide a body, which im sure is how they found it in the first place. after a kind wave goodbye, we decided on a nearby park instead. there was NOT enough room for three to sleep in the van, and since i am partial to the outdoors, i decided to throw down my sleeping bag and get some much needed rest. after 5 minutes, i was sleeping soundly. maybe 2 hours later, i woke up to the most physically impossible hard rain i have ever experienced. it was like i was getting shot in the face with a high pressure hose. which is pretty much what it was, a giant sprinkler in the face. and another hitting me from the side. and from above. i scrambled up and tried to grab everything, ipod, phone, stuffed animal (thanks alice!). yeah, theres me running across the park lawn, giggling like crazy, with no pants on and my sleeping bag streaming behind me like a sail. im lucky there were no cops around then, i would have been locked up on a 5150. (but dont you worry, they came to hassle us the next morning as i was trying to dry my stuff out). so i crawled into the van, pressed up against the steering wheel, and shivered myself into an uneven sleep. my teammates were quietly smirking, im sure…
