Day 4 Recap

Today was weird. We finally hit dirt roads. Saw some Pony Express stations and lovely countryside. Then disaster struck.







The muffler on the truck fell off. And my windshield picked up a nice crack. We had to stop in Beatrice, Nebraska to get the muffler fixed. Jim's gonna get me a new windshield when we get home. This put us way off schedule, so we had to just race to Ogalalla, Nebraska as fast as we could.







On the way, we saw the most spectacular looking storm I've ever seen form in front of us. We beat it by about an hour, so no rain while we drove at least.







I drove on and off for 12 hours today. So I'm going to go to sleep now.


-- Post From My iPhone

Day 3 Recap

My iPhone ate this post once, so I'm gonna try again then get to bed. After we visited some museums in St. Joseph, we drove out into absolutely unimaginable heat.




We hit our first dirt roads today. I'm glad to say that Big Ethel (my car) handled them beautifully. One such road, however, was basically some time tracks on grass. When Jim and Greg, our riders, went to see how traversible it was, Greg fell off his bike. It's not as bad as it sounds. When they do fall, it's typically from a stand still. And they'll probably ended falling a lot more.




We came upon a rather strange memorial at one point. Thinking we found the tomb of Jefferson Davis, we found the grave of some guy named John Davis, a wealthy man obsessed with his wife.




We had to cut our travels short when Jim suffered near heat exhaustion. We're holed up in a really nice motel called the Thunderbird. Tomorrow we're going to try to make up for lost time. We'll see how it goes.




-- Post From My iPhone

Day 2 Recap

So we pack up the campsite, and as we get the last o the gear loaded, the rain started. Thus began 9 hours of travel to St. Joseph, MO.




We spent most of the day on I-70 (with a quick jaunt on I-270 just to change things up).




Aside from a Disney sing-a-long and a lot of rest stops, not much happened today.







Well I did get a panorama app for my iPhone.




We've arrived at a Holiday Inn in fabulous St. Joseph. Right now I'm going to hit the pool then take a shower. It should prove glorious.

Day 1 Recap

Well here I am in a tent in a campground in Marshall, Illinois. It's a tent I put together myself. Having never done it before, I'm feeling pretty excited that I'm able to lie in here bug free and in relative comfort. Yes, it is my first time camping.




We struck out today from Pittsburgh around 9:30am once we manaed to get everything packed. Generally we drove in 3 sets of 3 hour spurts. I did all the driving today, which was actually pretty fun. We stopped at a couple gas stations, a Subway, and rest stops. We also stopped at Cabella's.



Now of you've never been to a Cabella's imagine the penultimate store dealing with your favorite hobby. This is the outdoorsman equivalent. The highway sign listed it as an attraction. They also have more stuffed animals than a Teddy bear factory.



Camping is strangely proving to my liking. I know I don't exactly come off as an outdoorsman, but when I do attempt this kind of stuff, I always end up liking it. Perhaps I should do it more often.




Tomorrow we continue to St. Joseph, Missourri. We going to shoot some B roll footage as we break in our equipment. I may also have to relinquish control of my car for the first time. We'll see how that goes.

-- Post From My iPhone

First Post!

Hello there! Thanks for visiting this blog. I've set this up to act as a travelogue of the upcoming documentary I'm filming as part of the Alt Project (http://bit.ly/altproject/). We'll be documenting the original Pony Express Trail from St. Joseph, MO to Sacramento, CA. During the trip, I'll be using my iPhone to update this blog as often as possible with photos and thoughts of where we are and what we're doing. For even more bit sized updates, you can follow our Twitter as well (http://Twitter.com/altproject/). We leave June 20, so expect the updates to start flying in at that point.

Meanwhile, enjoy a pic of our crew meeting yesterday.



That's all for now. Ttyl!

-- Post From My iPhone