Day 1: Our Journey Begins...

We set out from the lovely town of Winchester, MA around half past eleven in the morning. Loading the car was a bit of a challenge, since we had to work around the house painters who were blocking off the rear entrance. This necessitated a bit of creative circumnavigation of the yard. Nevertheless, we did finally get ourselves underway, as you can see here.

Fortunately, we managed not to run over any bushes or the neighbor's cat on the way out of the driveway, and we took this to be a good sign for the forthcoming journey.

Everyone came out to wave goodbye to us. Well, everyone except the elder of David's two sisters, who was too grief-stricken at his departure to show her face on camera. The painters didn't really bother to come out either, now that I think of it. But anyway, everyone else came by to see us off on our transcontinental adventure.

(Who the heck is that in the black shirt?)

The first leg of our journey was Interstate 90, which also happens to be the Massachusetts Turnpike. You would have to figure that a state like Massachusetts would tax us for using the roads -- they tax people for just about everything else they do.

(Actually, to be fair, New York treats I90 as a toll road as well, and charged us considerably more for the privilege of using it than Massachusetts did)

Here's David collecting a ticket as we enter the Mass Pike. Don't worry, we don't really think this is an exciting image either. But believe me, when you are driving across the whole country, your days start to revolve around events like these.

To alleviate some of the boredom of watching the road go by, sometimes it helps to get a new perspective on things. Here, for instance, David proves that objects in the mirror really are closer than they appear.

Fortunately for us, they weren't all that close to begin with.

For a state that collects as much tax revenue as it does, Massachusetts sure is pathetically small. Nevertheless, it sure does take a long time to get across. Through the magic of Photoshop, you can hardly tell that it was pouring rain when we got this shot of the "Welcome to New York" sign at the border.

It was around this point when we looked at the atlas, and started to realize just how enormous a drive we had in front of us. Those of you who have travelled across the country before may now chuckle knowingly (we know better now, too)

One of the perils of letting David loose with a digital video camera while you're driving, is the fact that you can't keep him from pointing the thing at you. Fortunately, this clever fellow has his shades on, so you can't tell who he really is.

(That black shirt looks suspiciously familiar, for some reason, however)

Here we are stopped, as Michael pays one of our many tolls in cash.

What do you mean, it says "Do not stop"?

What do you mean, it says "No cash accepted"?

Oops.

We figured it would take us about eight hours from the time we left Winchester, to get to Buffalo, New York. We were right. We had considered the possibility of heading up to see Niagara Falls, but by the time we got here, we had already decided we needed to make it to Cleveland before midnight.

Why anybody would want to make it to Cleveland is an open question, but we were young and naive then.

The sun is setting much earlier this time of year, but at least it's pretty to look at. This is somewhere east of Erie, PA. We only went through a little corner of Pennsylvania, but it was enough for us to count it when we list out all the states we've been across.

We had decided to stop for the night in Cleveland, Ohio. They say that every country has one city that everyone likes to make fun of. Cleveland is that city for the United States. We have it on good authority that Cleveland is also the city they make fun of in Russia.

At this point, Cleveland is still a couple hours away, but time tends to run together when you're driving a lot.

Welcome to the big honking stadium on the outskirts of Cleveland. Actually, it's probably right in the middle of the city, but what do we know? In any case, it claims to be the home of the Cleveland Indians, which we believe is a baseball team.

This stadium had a big name on it, but we can't seem to remember what it is, at the moment. Oh well.

We took a wrong turn on our way to the hotel. However, we were gratified to discover that Ohio has adopted a very forward thinking policy on sexual relations. We were a bit confused about their motivations for posting this along the roadside, but you never know about them out-of-town folks.

Ah, at last. A place to sleep. Hopefully, the fact that this place is called the "Super 8 Motel" doesn't mean they have movie cameras installed in each of their rooms. Yes, the clock does say 11.20pm. That's still Eastern time.