Starting off in Hoppy

Howdy Pilgrim! After crossing the Mississippi and finding some time to sit down to start the account of yet another summer of freedom and travel, I begin to realize yet again how lucky of a kid I am. Evan Wimpey, a friend of mine (of internet fame from the “Lecture Crashers” videos on Youtube) from Georgia Tech, is driving my 1984 Toyota Huntsman Motorhome that has been chugging straight from St. Louis to Denver like a champ today (16 hrs). This style of travel isn’t for everyone, because we oftentimes have trouble pushing 55 mph over the rolling his of the Great Plains, but after a few hours of realizing there’s no hurry anyways, the RV (from here on known as “Hoppy”) begins to grow even more on you. We’ll talk more about my summer home in a little bit.

I began the journey last Thursday, May 28^th when I picked Evan up from a MARTA station in north Atlanta. He threw his bags in the back and had the biggest smile on his face for the first few hours from the pleasant surprise of such an incredible road tripping vehicle. From there, we made our first stop in Franklin, TN to see Gil and Jill Eustice, the parents of my former girlfriend Melissa Eustice who passed away in a car accident in Feb. 2008. I coached the summer league swim team for two summers with Megan and Melissa while their dad Gil ran the actual meets and the officiating. The Eustice’s moved to TN a couple years ago and I really wanted to get to spend an evening with them in their new home. They are infamous for having lots of cats, and there was no mistake as we were greeted by 13 of them. They had an elusive white squirrel that lived in the back yard that’s managed to stay away from their grasp. After a nice dinner and time to catch up on their new Tennessee life, Evan and I headed north to Bowling Green, KY where we’d be caving at Mammoth Cave National Park the next day.

Arriving right on time to our 6 hour tour of Mammoth on the Wild Cave tour, a concert pianist named Janet Smith was our guide for the day. Janet proceeded to bring us up to speed on what we were getting ourselves into, and said that where and how far we went would be determined by our abilities to keep up. There were only 6 of us on the tour, all in good shape (as weren’t allowed on the tour if you exceeded certain dimensions because we’d be squeezing through crevices all day) so I was excited about a serious day of caving. We descended into a 230 ft. deep shaft that had been blasted to access deeper parts of the cave, where we popped out into a nice big cavern. We walked along the cavern for a bit, came upon a small hole next to a rock on the side, and proceeded head first down the hole for our first crawl. Janet is a speedy caver…did I mentioned she’s 73 and leads this tour every summer? Our expedition covered 6 miles over the course of the day and took us through holes that you could only squeeze through if you laid out like Superman and inched your way through them. One of my favorite parts was when we all got to a spot where we could sit together and turn our lights out and experience the intense darkness and silence that deep under ground. I can’t imagine exploring the cave in a time where your oil lantern could fail and leave you stranded 8 hours underground. Not the kind of thing I’m interested in. These caves are much different than the stereotypical cave site because they connect together to make an incredibly long network – 370 miles and growing! They still actively find new passages. The caves are different additionally in the sense that they were formed by flowing water and thus do not have much in the way of stalactites or stalagmites, as the area above the caves is largely capped by sandstone which prevents water from seeping in. I really enjoyed the parts of the tour where we popped out from under a rock into a large cavern where a different tour group happened to be walking by…I could imagine how jealous I would’ve been if I were one of the kids on that tour. At the end of the day, we were filthy, tired, and hungry, but extremely happy with our caving experience. Just for information, if you wondered what “spelunking” means like I did, spelunking is what a novice caver participates in. If you have experience caving, then you are a true caver.

From Bowling Green, we ventured west to St. Louis. The weather was superb all weekend for us, raining only at night while we were asleep. We made our first grocery stop, went on the Annheiser-Busch brewery tour, stopped at the famous Arch and learned a lot about St. Louis’ role in the westward expansion of the US. I guess I’ve crossed the Mississippi on road before, but learning more about Tom Sawyer, riverboating, and what it must’ve been like to ford the river was very rewarding. We met up with college friends Eli Riddle (at Washington University’s Med School) for some famous Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard. It goes to show that a business really has something special when the locals are as numerous as the tourists late on a Saturday night. Some of Eli’s friends recently graduated from Yale in New Haven, CT, so it was nice to get some insight on what my new home will be like. The following day we met up with Patrick Odneal (working near his hometown at the world’s largest concrete plant) and toured the St. Louis Cathedral and Forest Park. The Cathedral was incredible, one of the few churches esteemed enough to have the “Basilica” designation. The entire ceiling of the building was covered in mosaic tiles, taking 84 years to complete. Afterwards, we drove around St. Louis’ flagship park that covers more ground than Central Park. The plethora of free museums, expansive greens, sports fields, pavilions, etc. was impressive and is something to be cherished by the resident’s there. We set up my slackline for a little fun in one of the groves of trees. You’ll see me talk more about that later but slacklining is a balance control ‘sport,’ if you will, where you tie a 1” wide nylon strap really tight between two trees and essentially tight rope walk across it. It’s fun, easy to set up, free, and challenging. We had some St. Louis style pizza and then played disc golf outside of town. St. Louis was a fun place to visit, emphasized by some great friends and incredible weather.

Hoppy has been running fabulous. I didn’t know what to expect from small truck a year older than me, but the 97 hp 4 cylinder hasn’t had any trouble yet. We’ve had to add a little oil and a little radiator fluid but otherwise haven’t had any complaints. We learned a little bit about packing groceries against doors that could open during turns, but otherwise haven’t had too bad of luck with the novice camper syndrome. My parents were extremely helpful in getting me prepared and set up to hit the road, I certainly couldn’t have done it without them.

My road trip is tentatively planned to last until July 15^th, when I will return home, pack up my stuff, and head to Connecticut. My two roommates Jon Berggren and Steve Young will have already been working for a month and will hopefully have most everything figured out by the time I get there. We settled on a nice little 4 br 1 ½ ba in the west haven part of New Haven, check it out at 128 Maplewood Ct. New Haven, CT on Google maps. I start work on July 27^th and am excited about the working world. Oh wait, I have 2 more months of road tripping before then…woohoo!