Prologue: Adventure Before THE Adventure

Welcome to our blog! We have started this blog to keep all of our friends and family up-to-date on our life's happenings. We hope you enjoy reading about our adventures.

I (Jeremy) am writing this sitting at a desk in a motel in Wichita. The past two weeks have been a crazy smorgasbord of stress, anxiety, and excitement. After finishing residency at the end of June, we started focusing on our transition to our next stage in life. We moved out of our apartment on July 4th. However, because today (July 16) is Marissa's last day of work, we have been sleeping on an air mattress in an empty apartment.

Prior to moving out of our apartment, we decided to take most of our breakable items to our new house. Therefore, on the Monday before our big move, we loaded Tinkerbell, our Ford Explorer, and Marissa headed west. When Marissa was about 30-45 minutes west of Wichita, Tink's check engine light came on, and the car started shaking violently. Luckily, she was within 6 miles of Cheney, KS, where there happened to be a Ford dealership. So, she drove Tink at a slow pace to the dealership to find out what was going on. After a diagnostic test was done, Tink was officially pronounced dead. Not only did we have our move to worry about, but we now had to worry about finding a replacement vehicle as Tink was going to be our ride for our big adventure to the western US.

We returned to our empty apartment after we moved over the 4th of July weekend. Marissa had to work on Monday, so I began the process of calling around for the best deal on a new vehicle. We had an idea in mind as to what we wanted. I made calls to most Honda dealers in Kansas and in northern Oklahoma. Surprisingly, the best deal we found was in Bartlesville, OK. So, on Tuesday, we made a road trip to Bartlesville to buy a Honda Pilot. Because he is a Pilot, we affectionately named him Captain. (Our cars started having names about 3 years ago when the first "Transformers" movie came out. It's only appropriate to give a proper name to something that keeps you protected, right?) Whew! All of our troubles were solved. Or were they just beginning?

The next night, we decided to test out the new speakers of Cap by going to the drive-in movie. This would be the evening of July 8. As most Wichitians know, this was the night of the huge, surprise hail storm that blew through the city. The drive-in manager reported that a severe storm was heading our way, so we jetted out of the parking lot, hoping to beat the storm. We did not. We made it to I-135 and Pawnee before the big hail started. We pulled into a residential neighborhood that had lots of large trees, hoping they would help block some of the hail. Here's the radar signature from that storm:
The whites and purples in the image are the largest hail. This measured baseball to softball size. Luckily, we were "only" in the red area. Therefore, our hail was only about golf ball to tennis ball size. Needless to say, our new vehicle now looks like a golf ball on wheels. I guess it could be worse. None of our windows were broken, and we were safe.

Our pre-adventure doesn't stop there. We decided to take Cap our for a spin since he had been garaged for a few days after the storm. As we were were driving down the main road in Andover, a police man came up behind us and turned on its emergency lights. I quickly pulled Cap over, wondering what was going on. Surely one of the tail lights wasn't busted from the storm. I definitely wasn't speeding. The cop came up to the window and proceeded to tell me that our temporary license plate had expired. "What!?" I exclaimed. I told him we bought it 3 days ago in Bartlesville. He looked at the tag again, and he apologized for pulling me over. Apparently, in Oklahoma, they print the day that the vehicle is purchased on their temporary tags. In Kansas, they write down the day the tags expire.

And that leads us to now. On top of all these stressful and exciting events, we have experienced many Wichita "lasts." We said good-bye to our Sunday School class and our church on Sunday, we ate at our favorite Mexican food restaurant in Wichita for the last time, I ran my 3-mile route and my 4-mile routes for the last time, and I saw one last movie at the Warren before heading west for good. Needless to say, we will come back for the occasional weekend, but it won't be the same as living here for the past three years.

The next week looks to be busy as we prepare for our 6-week road trip to the American West. We hope you continue to follow us as we begin our journey and have the experience of a lifetime.