DAY 1 - California to Maryland
Ok so we get up early and get our butts down to Long Beach in time for our flight to Washington D.C. It was long and painful sweating the 5 hours in the middle seat between the grannies, but Ipod and Gameboy Advance saved the day. Not to mention "Escape from L.A." staring Kurt Russel, which was playing on the Direct TV screen embedded in the head rest in front of me. Wow, that movie is amazing. So amazing in fact I could only watch 15 minutes of it. So we get there, and as an added bonus, Heidi finds out she's gotten the Pixar internship for summer. WHOA! Huge bones to her and everyone else. Huge. So after some intense Mille Bornes playing in which I lost every game we went to sleep.....in Maryland.
DAY 2 - Maryland Bums
So we wake up at 12:30.... in Maryland. We bum around, buying things like Froot Loops with mini Lightning McQueen toys, Cars Bumper Bites graham crackers, and Captain's Gold Pirates of the Caribean M&Ms with awesome pirate skulls instead of m's on them. We also see this awesome Cars dodgeball:
And we ate at Chick Filet for the first time in months. Mmm. The day wasn't that exciting, but the anticipation was thick for Friday. I also found out that night that Ed, Court, Alex and Shawn got jobs at Laika for the summer. Also a huge bones for them! It was quite a peculiar thing to hear all this news of jobs and internships during my crazy vacation. It made it even crazier! I'm sad everyone's leaving for the summer, but glad no one will be bored and poor.
DAY 3 - The Best Day EVER!
Wow guys. Wow. This day was awesome. We get our butts up at 7:30 and start driving to North Caralina. It takes about 7 hours to get there. We eat at Chick Filet... again. Mmm. The forecast calls for rain, but the skies don't look it. We amuse ourselves with general road trip silliness for the whole trip, and in the last 20 miles we hit massive gross traffic. We navigate our way through it and finally the glory of Loews Moter Speedway comes over the hill!
We freak out for like 10 minutes and Heidi takes a lot of photos of the side of the building, but then excitement dies down as we sit for almost 2 HOURS in a block's worth of traffic trying to get into the speedway. Not to mention the black storm cloud, lightning and sudden down pours that seemed to surround ONLY the Loews Motor Speedway. The show was supposed to start at 7:00pm with "entertainment" beginning at 6:30. We finally get the car parked at 6:35 and run into the stadium. We also come to realize we're not aloud to take cameras in, and I chickened out and didn't sneak it in, so I have no photos of inside. "It exists now only in my memory." (Do you guys know what this quote is from? You're a girly dork if you do! :)) So we get in there and run to our seats. Everything's wet and dripping, but the storm seems to be clearing up. The speedway was HUGE!!! I'm sure it was miles long! You felt like a tiny pion sitting in the bleachers. There were 30 thousand people there and we only filled up like a fourth of the bleachers. There were four huge 75 foot screens set up in the inner circle of the track, a stage with a giant cars logo, and a bunch of smaller screens broadcasting images from the red carpet. Here's some pictures I found online:
It's still drizzling and I in a panic run back to get the apparantly free rain ponchos we completely bypassed at the entrance. We sit in our dorky rain ponchos clutching our pillows waiting for the "entertainment" to start. Nothing. They're driving these incredibly loud blow drying trucks around the track trying to dry it off, and that's about it. Finally the guy comes over the intercom telling us that the rain is slowing things down, but to be patient. So we wait. Finally they bring some Nascars out and announce all the drivers and everything. Then they do the National Anthem as fireworks shoot off and F16's fly over our head. F16s!!!! This is an f16:
Then they do a real fake Nascar race that was so loud and awesome! Then Larry the Cable guy comes out and announces John Lassater and Paul Newman and the movie stars and some race car people and stuff. Then BRAD PAISLEY comes out with his paisley guitar and fiery red wolf shirt and plays country songs for us!! This is Brad Paisley:
And then as if this parade of awesomeness wasn't enough they start the movie!! The PIXAR movie, CARS! I had a weird feeling like I didn't want them to start the movie cause I'd been anticipating it for so long and I felt like if they started it my heart, lungs, and liver might all simultaneously explode and then.... well and then I wouldn't be able to watch the movie. But it started nevertheless and it was awesome.
Man I know a lot of people think this is going to be Pixar's weakest film, but its totally not! At least not to me. And maybe its because I love cars and country music and road trips that I love it so much, but I don't know. It's pretty awesome. The opening is really cool. I mean REALLY cool. Then you kind of have to settle yourself into a world that's populated by only cars, and its a little weird at first. You're not sure not to feel about it, but the movie keeps going and showing you things that you've seen before, but never imagined quite like this, (New synapses, people! New synapses!) and then before you know it you're in love with the characters, the world, and the story! And I guess its not as fancy and high-tech as The Incredibles, but there's something delightfully John Lassater about it. I mean its talking cars, for gosh sakes! I teared up quite often during this film. There are really just some beautiful moments in there. And not to mention the way it looks. Geez Pixar!! The backgrounds are beautiful, and the cars are so solidly cars, but they have so much human personality. It's amazing! They do such cool things with the tire structure, man so clever. In fact there's so much cleverness and artistry stuffed into every shot it was hard to take it all in. I need to see it again.... a lot. I could probably go on for quite a while about this, but I need to encapsulate the rest of this journey. Maybe I'll post more later.
Ok so the movie ends, and there's some HE-larious stuff at the end while the credits are rolling. I won't say a word cause it will spoil it, but its pretty durn funny! And then they shot off a huge load of firewords to Rascal Flatts' cover of "Life is a Highway", from the Cars soundtrack. Heidi and I bought the song off Itunes for a dollar and had been listening to it on repeat most of the trip, so yeah it was pretty sweet to see an elaborate fireworks display set to the song we'd been obsessing over for the past few days. YEAH! So we sat there geeking out hardcore as the 30 thousand people left the stands. We both decided it was the best 10 dollars we'd ever spent, and we left and it was like 2:00am so we crashed at a Comfort Inn somewhere in North Carolina.
Day 4 - Road Trip Back to Maryland
I think the decision to premiere Cars at a Motor Speedway in North Carolina was so incredibly genius. I mean the movie is about seeing life as a journey and enjoying the trip, and in order to get to North Carolina you had to journey in someway. Having this in LA would have been totally inappropriate, I mean seriously. It really felt good to have to drive the next day. And drive we did, back to Maryland for another 7 hours. We ate at Chick Filet again. Our thrice visit. Mmm. Then we get back, take showers and my parents take us and my sister out on the boat for a BBQ. I hadn't been out on our boat in like two years and it was really nice to be back out on the Chesapeake Bay. We go to sleep none to happy we have to get up at....
Day 5 - Maryland to California
5:30. Ouch. It hurt, but my parents drove us all the way out to the Washington DC airport and we got on the plane. We flew all the way back, and then drove all the way back to good ol' Mountain Terrace. We were so exhausted we napped until the evening. Now you would think this would be the end of the adventure, but no there's more! Heidi has to drive back to Utah the next day, and I offer to go with her cause her mom doesn't want her driving alone, and plus road trips are awesome!! So Heidi has to pack. I help her and we don't finish until like 1:00 am. It was pretty exhausting. We also played Street Fighter II an hour or so before the packing and I believe that's when I may have, "thrown Ryu out of a dragon puch. out the air."
Day 6 - California to Utah
Heidi and I actually both get up before our alarm goes off and pack up the car. It was jampacked, and you couldn't see out the back, but we did it. We take off for Utah through the desert. Driving through the desert is awesome. It just really feels like a road trip when you drive through the desert. Most of the day is spent searching for a Popeye's, but we end up going to a Long John Silver's instead and getting these ridiculously huge root beer floats. We see various cool things along the way. A tow truck just like Tow Mater:
This ridiculous McDonald's billboard, which I simply can't get enough of:
These diner seats that look like the Cars' logo:
So we get to Utah and go to see Heidi's dog, her brother calls me an idiot and then we go to sleep.
Day 7 - Nerds in Utah
So we get up and eat "Colassal Crunch", and "Kong sized Apple Jacks", then be lazy for a while, then eat Cafe Rio, which has the most delightful Mexican salad thing I have ever eaten! We go see X3 with her brother, which was better then I thought it was going to be, but still pretty terdish. Then we shop for cowboy magnets with no success, before having dinner at Heidi's sister's place and then playing a huge game of ultimate frisbee and freezing our feet on the cold grass. I hit a guy in the face and tripped over my own foot. It was awesome. So then we go back and go to sleep, sad that's its the last day of our adventure.
Day 8 - Jen is Really Tired
So we get up at 4:30am. FOUR THIRTY!! It was so painful. And I flew out of Utah, flew into Long Beach, got picked up by Ed, and drove all the back to my apartment all before I'd normally be awake! Then I got in my car and drove all the way to work and "worked" the rest of the day. I felt pretty hardcore. And then the adventure was over.
