Day 1 Miles 0 to 681.4

For the next 10 days I will slowly post less and less on our first family vacation in 10 years.  For that I am sorry.  I am also sorry for my misspellings, bad grammar and general lack of refinement in these posts.  I do not have time to give them to my editor, Kendra though I am sure she will correct me when she reads them.  the posts are, in short, to share what this crazy family of mine gets up to when stuck in an SUV for 17 hours is like.

Our first leg of the trip is From Lubbock, TX to Mansfield, MO. and by far our longest day in the car on the way to Chicago.  We started at precisely 06:40 and a little bit and headed east.  The first hour of any road trip is always the most awkward as we all settle into our seats and try to remember what we forgot at home.  
Sean sat in the third row and said nothing, Miriam fiddled with her phone and ipod Kendra and I talked and Bridget brewed a surprise.  An hour into the trip she became flush and a little car sick.. I pulled over, made her more comfortable and gave her a plastic bag.  She belched once and let loose grabbing the bag just in time to throw up on target.  Well in the target bag.  We pulled over again and Kendra tied the bag up and put it on the running board.  She made Bridget a little more comfortable and we took off again. The bag is somewhere between Crosbyton and Wichita Falls.

After that everyone put on headsets and either watched movies or listened to books.  Kendra is re-listening to the latest Outlander as she just finished it and wanted to reread in case she missed something.  I was listening to Dune, 1996 recording by Scott Brick.

Just outside of Wichita Falls I gave Kendra the wheel and we bounced our way into Oklahoma.  If you've never driven through Oklahoma and want to know what it is like then you simply need to go fin your local orange barrel construction site, shove a load of bricks in your pants and have someone jump on your back...for 5 hours.  It has been the  same for the last 200 years.  Construction never stops.  We spent $13.50 in tolls on toll roads.  The money going for Orange barrels I guess because they never fix a damn thing.  Fortunately the kids leaned over while buckled for a while.
At around noon I get a call from a new printer I am using for some of my photo work and the girl tells me there is a problem with my artwork that won't work on the book.  After making her cry I jump on my computer and open a VPN to my home computer, open Photoshop and edit my artwork while driving in Oklahoma using my phone as a hotspot.  Against all odds it worked.  I was able to get the artwork to her and we are back on track with the book 2 weeks late.


Just outside of Oklahoma City I took the wheel again and Kendra made some PBJs on the road.  Well, on her laptop.  She then did some work while I continued my book.  Bridget watched some movies with headphone on and every now and then a chuckle would burst from her mouth.

Somewhere along the way I discovered that if you say "Turkey" over and over in 4/4 time you can add "Hobby Lobby" from a second voice every 2nd bar and it sounds pretty cool.  If you can continue to say "turkey" after your partner says "Hobby Lobby" without cracking up.  This music composition lasted an hour or so never really finding out just how awesome the music would be if we could finish a phrase.  Miriam told me to shut up a couple times and then ended up filming us at some point.

Once you take the headphones off the kids the bickering begins and my blood pressure goes up.  I did limit myself to less than 3 curse words in their general direction so it wasn't bad for sitting in a truck all day.

Exactly 10 hours and some odd minutes after leaving we arrived in Mansfield, MO and checked into the Weaver Inn B&B.  In the Roseroom.  We went next door to a Mexican restaurant and then back to the
B&B for some cookies and tea.  Kendra and I sat on a nice bench in the small town of 1200 residents and listened to 3 voices bicker at each other.  Ah, Bliss.

Tomorrow:  Laura Ingalls Wilder's home and Columbia, MO.