from LA to Chicago

Well, we got out of Los Angeles around 10:00 am on Wednesday, n not the 4m we had hoped for but we didn't stress about it.  The accountant who finally showed up at 9:00 didn't do her calculations correctly (she actually had our rent listed for about 800.00 more than we were paying) and she reimbursed us 2 extra days of rent so we actually made about 600.00 by waiting around.  Good things come to those who wait!

here are  our bikes, the dogs crates and all our luggage for 1 year

We were on the road for about 2 hours and all of a sudden Stella started to shake and pant. We were not sure what was going on, she's never done that before.  We stopped to let the kids go out, gave them some water and let them walk around a bit.  Back in the car and 1/2 hour later she started it again.  Poor little thing, she was miserable the entire day.  We never knew she got car sick, but then again, we have never taken a long trip with her.  We made it to Cedar City, Utah around 7pm (they are mountain time so we lost an hour).  We found a good hotel, fed the dogs and went to get something to eat.  We all got a good nights rest and woke up around 7:00 am ready to hit the road.  

So, Bruce goes out to the car and comes back with "we have a flat tire".  WHAT!  Crap.  We called Alamo and they sent over a guy to help fix it.  He told us that it was probably a slow leak and that he would fill it up and then we should take it over to the tire place.  We did and they found a razor blade in the tire, he fixed it and $15.00 later we were on our way, heading to Carbondale Colorado to spend the night with Chris.  

All I can say is that if you have a chance to go to Bryce Canyon or Zion or Moab through Utah into Colorado on the I70 I highly recommend it.  It was the most beautiful scenery for hours.

waiting for the tire to get fixed

nice shirt & pants (studio clothes to be thrown away)

  We stopped a few time for the dogs and had a picnic lunch at one spot overlooking the rocks.  The colors range from white to tan to yellow to pink to red to purple...stunning.  We drove about 8 hours today.  This morning before we left we googles "dogs sick in car" and some of the things to try are: ginger snap cooking (sounds good to me), Rescue Remedy (we actually have some of this, a gift from Jamie & Elijah) and Dramamine.  So we gave Stella some cookies and the rescue remedy and she actually did much better today.  Only shook a couple times.  We'll pick up some Dramamine later today.

We had a great time Carbondale, Colorado with Chris.  Carbondale is right next to Aspen and it's so beautiful.  We'll were only there for the night.  Friday was a long long driving day from Carbondale to Omaha, Nebraska.  We were in the car for 12 hours.  We stopped at 9:00 pm, went to bed and got up early on Saturday to get to Chicago before 4:00 pm.

We arrived at Chicago O'Hare airport at 4:00 and took the rental car back.  We are staying at the airport, the Hilton is attached to the terminal.  We figured with 2 dogs, 2 crates, 2 bikes and 3 pieces of luggage it would be easier.  We are going to take all of the luggage over at 2:00 pm and then we'll take the dogs over around 4:00 pm and then we leave at 6:00 pm.  I know the dogs will be OK, but I'm nervous about putting them under the plane.  It's only 7 1/2 hours but I still worry.

We are just hanging out, relaxing and re-packing to make sure none of our bags go over 50 lbs..because if they do they charge you $378.00 extra.  Yikes.  We arrive in Paris tomorrow morning and then we'll stay in Paris Monday night and then leave Tuesday morning to go pick up the car we bought and then drive down to our place for the year.  We still can't believe that we are going for a year.  Probably won't hit us for a couple weeks.  We have internet at the house, but I'm not sure if will be a smooth set-up.  We will post as soon as we can.