We teleported to South Dakota... there, I said it!

So last we left off we were in rural Illinois blogging about rain and dogs chasing us... and less than 7 days later I'm in South Dakota and my awesome friend Stephanie Fei is yelling at me on Facebook that we haven't blogged in over a week! Yipes! So how is it humanly possible that in 7 days we got from the east side of IL to South Dakota/Nebraska? Easy... we drove here!

OK, so since we last blogged we have become the luckiest people in the world. First, a friend from CT (Adam McCaherty) hooked us up with places to stay with his family in both Sherman and Carlinville, IL. While we were in Sherman, I found out my old Air Force friends Regina & Chris Hatten were just down the road by St. Louis, MO, so we took somewhat of a detour and rode down to their place to hang out - man, was that awesome! It was so cool to catch up with them and Jeff & I had such a great time! Once this bike ride is over I am going to swing back by their house and steal their Pomeranian Charlie and his underdog sidekick, JoJo... seriously, I am.

Ok, so back to how the heck we got to South Dakota. Well, on the way down to Chris & Gina's, I had a phone interview scheduled with a potential job in the Denver, CO area where Jeff & I are relocating to after this bicycle ride is over. We were a little over halfway to the Hatten's when I received the phone call from the potential job, and although I had planned to be at a place where I could properly take a phone call, it had begun to rain on us about 10 miles before my scheduled call time and we just didnt make it. So where did I take the call? Standing under just enough roof attached to a sign that had a bike trail map on it that was literally able to keep just my head and phone dry while the rain continued to pour down on me. OH, and the whole time I was on the call Jeff was wandering around aimlessly in the rain waiting for me to be done. I must have done OK though, because I advanced to the next round of 'face-to-face' interviews in Denver, CO and will be taking care of that on Wed.

Thankfully with the potential job, all the stars managed to align and we were able to stash our bikes at the Hatten's and head out in a rental car towards Denver. What was that? South Dakota isn't on the way to Denver from Illinois? Lol... yeah, you're right, but I've seriously wanted to see Mt. Rushmore since I was BORN, so we headed up a little north of our destination and checked The Badlands & Mt. Rushmore off of our list of cool places to see in this lifetime. Now we are settled in at Scottsbluff, NE for the night and headed into Denver to look for apartments and catch up with Toshia & Jorge Chavez tomorrow night -- can't wait to show Jeff Colorado and introduce him to some folks from back home!!!

And that... is the story of how we ended up in South Dakota... as told by my flaky memory and sporadic mind...




~Styx & Bones