Euro Epic: Day 1: Traveling

May 21st-

We're off!

I'm sick. All signs indicate I'm suffering from allergies and asthma and not-enough-sleep due to excitement, but I'm fairly certain it's really the devil. It's the most inconvenient timing, leaving for Europe with a soggy tissue fixed to face and eating cough drops for breakfast lunch and dinner. I hate cough drops, they taste like sickness. If I even smell them, I start to lose my voice and my nose runs.

Anyway, we picked everybody up in Corinth around noon. We've rented a 15 passenger van, but the ten of us in the back were crammed, thanks to luggage that took up enough space for 7 people. But we're all loaded up and on the road! 18 months of planning and stressing and stokedness is all in one bus headed, headed down to NYC! We're flying out from JFK, catching our connection in Paris and then ROME! 3 hour drive, 10 hours worth of flying, [add a couple hours for layover time] and then add the physical stress of the time change, it's going to be a really interesting day. Ican'twait!

This bus is like an earthquake on wheels. Try resting a head against the window and brains rattle out ears. It feels a vehicular ocean in a way, it's swaying and rumbling, rising and sinking down the Northway. It sounds poetic when I write it out, but when feeling like the metal going 65 mph down the road is about to splatter everywhere, it's not so awesome. I'm pinned between a solid wall of backpacks and 6' 4'' Patrick Saville. If the van does shake apart, I'm old news! It's a little exciting.

I think the next few weeks will be stuffed with long hours on buses and airplanes. I wonder if I'm going to have to punch an Italian boy in his fine features... and I really, really hope that dad doesn't kill Rafiki!