After over a year of planning, countless emails, pitches, grant applications, conference calls, and meetings, the day to hook up the Airstream and hit the road arrived. To relive how this project came to be, click back to our “Planning the Impossible” post from earlier.
Like anything extensive you plan for, you’re still not ready when the day comes. So, knowing we had time before our first state project of Vermont, we pushed back the launch date a few days. In retrospect, the days leading up to our departure seem like total blur of appointments and packing. Fortunately, we were in good company.
My parents’ house was chock-full of people. My aunt and cousins from Mexico were visiting so the house had a total of seven people living in it. Lucky for us, they all generously offered to help so we had seven pairs of hands put to work. Looking back on it, it truly was a special time that I’ll always remember: my father helping us put the [HAS HEART] decals on the Airstream, my mom and aunt doing loads of laundry for us because we were so busy, and my three younger cousins helping carry armfuls of things while packing up the trailer.
The next day we made the final ascent up the driveway to the Airstream, carrying last-minute items such as a roll of paper towel and the bottle of tequila my aunt gifted us. You know, the essentials. With my parents on either side of me, we walked up the driveway silently with Tyler in back of us, making sure to be in the perfect position to capture the moment on camera as he always manages to do.
After putting Noel into her crate in the backseat and a tearful goodbye to my parents, we were officially on the road. I’ll admit here that I am very attached to my parents, perhaps to a fault, but when you have the world’s best parents like I do who are also two of your best friends, I’ll challenge you to not get attached. Needless to say, it was a difficult goodbye.
It didn’t take long for Noel to start voicing her unhappiness of being contained within a crate. By the time we got to the Flying J’s truck-stop outside of Lansing 45 minutes later, she hadn’t stopped crying. We looked at each other both wondering if this was going to happen every time we were on the road, but neither one of us wanted to question it out loud.
We couldn’t focus on the little cat dilemma too long as a new one manifested: the need for water. Before we left, we hadn’t filled our potable (drinkable) water tank before departing because, long story short, Tyler had to drive the Airstream to the Todd Wenzel Chevrolet dealership for a photoshoot the night before with our awesome photographer friend, Brad Gillette. Since my parents driveway is the narrowest, tree-lined, snake-shaped driveway imaginable, there was no way we’d be able to back it down again, especially at night. So we had to park it on the street, too far from a fresh water hose to fill it at home. Seeing as we’d be on the road for a couple of days, we knew we needed to fill it, but assumed there’d be plenty of easy spots to do so, right? Rookie mistake.
Once we made fools of ourselves blowing the blob up enough to not sink in it, we had a moment where we couldn’t believe that just a couple of days ago, we were just sitting with family having a pizza feast, while the day before, we were in front of Niagara’s massive falls. The world felt small and large in that very same moment — a sentiment that we’d often come to feel throughout the tour.
Without spending too much more time pondering life’s big questions, we got our home setup and settled-in for our four-night stay where we were able to go for a run/walk (OK, mostly walk) along a converted railroad trail, brave the chilly water for a quick dip, and catch a Vermont summer sunset over the lake.
