The only person I know that has put in way too many miles more than I is Greg Walker, who seemed to be crazy enough not only to drive from Alaska to Florida, but then from Florida to Washington State … twice.  Along the way, he gave SITREP updates … which I guess, is military for Situational Report.  With his blessing, the blessing of the people who served in the military I know who are braver than I, and the blind acceptance of any other friend that could be watching, I started taking up that SITREP term on my grand drive across the USA.

I just happened to screw up and use the first one at Mile 0.0 to be an allegory to a well known song … so guess who now has to do the SITREPs in song form.

So Mile 0.0 went:

All the bags are packed, and ready to go. I am sitting out by my ex-front door; it’s time to pick the pup up to say goodbye.
The traffic is breaking in this late morning, and a jerk is whaling on his car horn; and I am so ready to flip a chapter that I could die.
Sorry – no jet planes to leave on.

That was about 11:30AM This morning.  Which means, if you checked your previous blog post, meant I got a good day in today.  The condo was spic and span by 11AM, and the dog was in the car shortly after.  So we hit the road with a good chunk of the day ahead of us.  I made great time after that across the Mass Turnpike and most of the NY turnpike, to the point that by 3PM I was looking at my reservation near Rochester, NY and saying “I can do better than that”.  So I pulled off, changed my reservations and hit the road.

Shortly after … the snow started to fly.

Turns out that as focused as I was to be ahead of a storm coming in on Thursday, I didn’t see that weather was coming in tonight.   By Utica, the sky was spitting, and by the Syracuse connectors there was definitely snow falling on my windshield.  At my last potty break, I made the pup get out to potty in the snow, just so he does it one last time in his life.  While the weather never really got dangerous, it was a little slick at times just east of Buffalo.  But by the time I turned south along the Lake Erie coast, it slowed down.

We checked into the hotel at Mile 453.6 in Hamburg, NY – just south of Buffalo.  Which ended up being about 80 miles more than planned, putting us well ahead of schedule.  With that came the following SITREP song:

Oh the weather outside went frightful
After most the day it was delightful,
Calling it a night in Buffalo
So let it snow let it snow let it snow

I know … it sucks … but it didn’t take me long to figure out this song thing was gonna suck.

The plan for tomorrow is an early rise and an early start.  We are 600 miles to the Iowa boarder where Mr. Jeremy Phillips is supposed to buy the free beer.  It will be a long hard push through Big Ten country, but we all know how easy it is for someone outside of the conference to roll through there.  Tomorrow night will be in the Quad Cities, where I expect to spend some time figuring out what the next step is.