A Good Road Trip: Touchdown Jesus and Blizzaks

Wow. I'm exhausted.

I arrived today in Vail, CO, fresh off a 3000 road trip that originated in DC and took me through New England before bringing me out West. I haven't done a cross country trip since I headed out to college in the fall of 2004. That time I was accompanied by my best friend and former supercoach Lionel Yarmon, and we had a great time passing through the Lower 48 en route to Massachussetts. We made a rule to play golf at least once every day, and then changed it to playing golf in every state. This time it was a little different. I was by myself and in full hammer mode, at least most of the time. The trip was a success, I arrived safe and sound, but I still made time to have a couple of fun experiences along the way.

About halfway into the State of Ohio I realized that I would need snow tires once I got to Colorado. My Passat has really nice performance summer tires (from the previous owner) but they are horrible in the snow. I was able to make it through last spring without too many slide outs but even then it was pretty sketchy, and trying to make it through a whole winter without proper tires isn't a possibility. So with lots and lots (and lots) of time on my hands I began trying to figure out the best way (read: cheapest) way to get the best snow tires with the least amount of hassle. Fast forward an hour later and I'm calling my older brother Nicholas to ask him to look up Craigslist in every major town I was passing through. About this time I started passing some of those massive distribution buildings for companies that only exist in the Midwest, and a light bulb went off in my head. I had him bag the ridiculous task of meta searching Craigslist (only a brother would do this) and instead asked him to look up headquarters of online tire stores. Bingo. Tirerack.com's WHQ is located in South Bend, Indiana. As it turned out I was able to pick up tires at the factory store, thereby getting internet prices on tires without the cost of shipping! Let your imagination run wild with how many high fives I was giving myself at this point. At 2am I pulled into the Super 8 located a half mile away from Tirerack.com's warehouse, ready to score some sweet Blizzak's at rock bottom prices.

The next morning at I showed up at the super warehouse ready to get my tire buying on. The only problem was that I wasn't the only person who had this ingenious idea, enough so that I had about an hour and a half wait. Time spent not driving is neither productive nor fun on a road trip, but I was able to turn this into a positive as Notre Dame was about 10 minutes away and having never been there I now had a chance to check out the place and even get in a workout. I took in the sites with a run around the unreal athletic complex, saw the golden dome, and said hi to Touchdown Jesus. I got a real kick out of the fact that the convocation and athletic center are in the same building next to the stadium. Church and football at Notre Dame are literally one. Anyway, after my Rudy reenactment I was back at Tirerack, picked up my tires and was on my way.

You just never know what is going to happen on a road trip and what is going to qualify as a successful day. I was also able to catch up with some of the crew of the DC BGC which was great, I miss those guys.Tomorrow morning I'm skiing at Loveland, a couple days of directed free skiing before hitting the gates. I'm super pumped on starting my final fall training block and almost as pumped to know that I'll be sporting some sweet shoes on my car along the way. Good to be out West!