Friends and Family

Hello Everyone! I know its been awhile since we've posted and we wanted to let people know that things are going well. We've been traveling across the U.S. with Piccolo (our '74 Mini) at a leisurely rate. Between taking breaks to see friends and doing some bike rides, our days have been a little longer than expected. There are a couple of reasons for that: 1) the route we are taking is really photogenic, 2) Piccolo's (self-imposed for mechanical reliability) top speed is about 110 kph (68 mph), and 3) We need to fill up the ~5 gallon fuel tank every 150 miles or so. You can follow our trip and see the places we drove through at this link:

Click to track our progress LIVE!

Our first entry to the U.S. was Maryland and were greeted home with this sign:

Made by my awesome niece and nephew!

We received a wonderful welcome home and it was great to see family and shed the weariness of 36+ hours of air travel and 10+ hours of jet lag. We struggle the first night to stay awake until 9:30pm but we needed to get over the jet lag as soon as possible. The next day we decided to run some errands. Shreya was excited to see her bike again and decided to take a "quick" ride along some of the roads near Laural, MD. 2.5 hours later she returned refreshed and ready to go! We took Piccolo in to the shop to get him ready for the long trip across the country and then decided to head to our old work stomping grounds. We got there a little late in the evening but still got to see our friends. Luckily, we planned for a happy hour later that evening and got to see some more friends. We had such a great time that I completely forgot to take candid pictures and group shots. I missed out on a great opportunity but there is no way I'll forget the fun times we had catching up with everyone!

Our first stop on our trip west was Pittsburgh. We left this a short drive to ease into the road trip mentality and to get a good technique down on what we needed in the car. Piccolo is pretty small so we need to be creative on where to keep things, and what things we needed on top vs. packed away for later. We got into Pittsburgh prior to lunch and met up with a friend so we could get in a ride to see scenic Pittsburgh:

Riding through Pittsburgh!

Afterwards, we met with some friends at D's Six Pack and Dogs. Again, I was completely caught up in the moment and forgot to grab pictures. However, if any of you guys head to Pittsburgh, this is a must stop, they have an entire beer CAVE, and that's all that really needs to be said.

Before heading out of town.

Our next stop was going to be St. Louis. However, we took our time getting pictures in Pittsburgh and just having fun on the road. Piccolo attracts a lot of friendly attention and we end up chit-chatting with a lot of cool people along the way. We ended up staying the night a few hours outside of St. Louis because it got late fast. However, the next day we had to stop and get some pictures:

Westward bound.

There is a lot more to the story but I'm running out of time. We're in Colby, KS right now about to head out to Denver, CO and Shreya is working on a post to cover the middle section of U.S. What I really wanted to talk about at the end of this post was about how blessed we are with the friends and family that we have. We are so lucky that it is hard to even tell the difference between friends and family. I think back about the time spent with them and nothing but smiles come to my face. I know we are moving away from some really great people on the east, but I know we'll stay in touch and see them again. As we are moving away from some, others will be closer, and new ones are always around the corner. This song reminds me of all of you guys and I can't wait to hang out with everyone again!