So Which Is ‘Dem 11 States?

I got a great question today from my friend Barb in Dallas, “Can't wait to read all your adventures. What states are you traveling through?”
 
Minor oversight to the blog about the 11 states we’re traversing – listing the actual states. I’ll first note that by design we’ll narrowly avoid setting foot into both Kansas and Nebraska (a “hats off” to all you Mizzou Tigers fans).
 
Let’s see, we’ll start by bisecting our state – beginning in eastern “Missouri” and ending in a foreign land known as “Missoura.” From there we’ll head north until we reach the western edge of Iowa. And boy, we’ll be within a stone’s throw of Nebraska for hundreds of miles. Next comes the great… err… grand… well, very vast and mostly empty state of South Dakota.
 
I could go on, but you get the picture.  Based on Barb’s question, I took the liberty of creating this interactive Google map of our journey. Might even update it along the way with some of our favorite sites and eats – we’ll see.
 

View Foodie Road Trip - Maiden Voyage! in a larger map
 
On an unrelated note, I had the privilege of grabbing a drink after work with a truly fascinating woman. She’s an executive coach today, but she spent more than 20 years as a ballerina at The Met and discovered opera along the way. She’s headed to Athens next week and I was stuck by the comment she made as her eyes lit up in anticipation of the journey, “I am transposed by antiquity.”
 
Now that’s a way of seeing (and being) I could rally behind! In other news, I need to pack, but I really, really don’t care to.

Time Flies When You're Dreading a Vacation

Hi there. Yes, it's been more than two months since my last post. A couple things contributed to this fact. Firstly, we got a puppy and she's absolutely wonderful. Like older couples yearning to adopt a baby after traditional methods fail, bringing this puppy into our home was both well planned and a long time coming. And she's the tops. And she's very entertaining. And it made the blog - with it's two readers - substantially less interesting to me.

Secondly, I've got to be honest with you, I've been dreading this vacation a bit. It's been a dream of my husband's to do it... and I do want to see all the sites... but I've had this image in my head of the 4,000 miles in Fusion being, well, a nuclear disaster. I had to mourn the fact that there would be no beach and I also had to get on vacation wagon.

Seeing how excited and optimistic Matt is about this trip has turned my frown upside down. We leave in nine days. Super sophisticated robbers, no need to case our place, we've got a house-sitter.

Wine is a Delight

Wine is one of my favorite things. But to be completely honest, I'm a low-class wino. Like many twentysomthings, I've been meaning to take wine-tasting classes for a few years (along with golf lessons, cake-decoration classes and learning a foriegn language at the local community college). Of course, none of these have happened to date.

I may be a cheap wino for life and that's ok with me. One thing's for sure, I'm not going to get any wine class on this road trip. But maybe I can do some regional sampling and describe the flavors and experience in simple terms... Would that be worth reading about?

Transitioning to this video, I'm a communicator by day and I love this video. It's a Flash-based infographic on wine. It's informative, entertaining and strategically clear. In other words, it makes me want to have a glass wine tonight... from my fancy boxed wine. There. I said it. I have $24 boxed wine in my kitchen right now. Why anybody spends $24 for wine in a plastic bag, I have no idea. Will be going back to bottles mostly out of shame.


The Conception of Wine - Infographic from Tiago Cabaco on Vimeo.