Headin' West

That pretty much sums up what we did today.... We started in New York this morning:

And then went west for a little PA-lovin':

We were only in PA for about five seconds (okay, an hour). We went across the top left square portion and then continued west:

Ohio. Is. Flat................

But, you can go 70 mph, so it had that redeeming quality.

We were in Ohio for a really long time. We stopped at two travel plazas and used a whole lot of gas across the Ohioan flatness. Plus side though, Ohio gas is (literally) 57 cents cheaper than NY gas.  Oh hey, look at that--two redeeming qualities...And we stopped for dinner at a....

Big Boy!  I've never actually been to one. Hadn't even seen once since the original Austin Powers (timeless classic that it is). Josh had been a looong time ago.  Really cool moment of the day: after dinner we grabbed the tripod so that we could take this touristy/cheesy picture with Big Boy himself. We were setting it up (in the middle of the parking lot b/c that's where the best angle was) when a guy came out and pretty much took the camera from us because, as he said, we were in the middle of the parking lot.  He was pretty funny....after he took a couple pics for us, he asked Josh how long he'd been in a chair and why. Turns out this guy had a C-5 injury a number of years ago (showed us his sweet scar) and was in a chair for awhile too. Then last year, he was in an accident that broke most of the bones on the left side of his body and here he is, fit as a fiddle and up walking around. (It was at this point when his friend chimed in and said they'd been friends for thirty years and the guy just won't die haha).  It's so very encouraging when those types of moments happen.  Meeting former chair users is so....i can't really think of a word that really encompasses what i mean. Hopeful. Meaningful. Encouraging....Peaceful. If you can think of a word that means all those things combined, let me know. It just kinda makes us feel like our tiny puzzle pieces of what we can see of our lives actually make a bigger picture.

Real time over. Back to sardonic reality. Because it's my favorite.... Now we're in:

And tomorrow we're gonna stop by:

We kinda creeped on DreamMaker Ann Arbor.  We went around the building to the back of the parking lot to take a picture of the trucks to send to my dad (because obviously the DMBK vehicle wrap would be new to him) and drove slowly by under the watchful gaze of security cameras. Hopefully they don't send creeper vehicle updates to the shop owners or they might not let us in tomorrow....