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Day 02: The Long and Winding Road

By Steve Stewart on August 4, 2008

Start: What an amazing day. Much of this day was to be spent on the road in solace, untested by traffic congestion and red lights. But the hot sun would be the biggest obstacle of the day, so we stocked the car with a cooler of ice and water.

The “Long” part: The road really started to take shape after that. Very long stretches of road expanded past the horizon under a perfectly blue sky. We passed many abandoned gas stations, motels, and some forgotten towns. At one point, we found one of the original spans of the route that no longer was maintained and was not clearly visible on the maps. Parts of the road had been washed away, and much of it was broken, but those are the little surprises we are hoping to find all along the way!

“And”: After leaving California, the road took us through Oatman, AZ. This old mining town turned Wild West with gunfight reenactments and wild donkeys roaming the streets. It’s a total tourist trap and COMPLETELY worth visiting. But the REAL attraction is what we were about to find a few miles to the east.

Now this is WINDING!
Now this is WINDING!

The “Winding” part: To the east of Oatman is Sitgreaves Pass, the longest tangled string of hairpin turns and steep mountains that we have ever seen. Incredibly beautiful mountain faces towered over us for a good hour (we stopped frequently to take pictures, lots of pictures). It’s a drive that can not be described in a few short sentences, so you will just have to save your money and rent your OWN convertible. TOTALLY worth it!

Stop (many, many stops): Once clear of the mountain we continued east through more populated areas. Here we began to see the nostalgic sites of Route 66 with little soda fountains and neon motel signs, just like you would find in a book. My parent’s youth still lives in places like Kingman and the Hackberry General Store.

We made it to Holbrook, AZ and are about to head out to, well, to somewhere. We are close to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forrest, but we might just stick to the road.

DAY 01: I'M ON VACATION!

By Steve Stewart on August 3, 2008

Day 01: We started by meeting in LAX, then rented a CONVERTIBLE. We drove to the starting point, Santa Monica Pier, and had dinner at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. We took in a few street performances (we met one street dancer who we considered joining our breakdance crew – see his MySpace page at Flex81@Yahoo) and Timm bought himself two cotton candies (one pink and one blue). Then we spent the next two hours looking for Route 66. I still can’t understand; we have one Route 66 fanatic, two books, and a Garmin GPS unit and could NOT find a Route 66 sign in Santa Monica. We must be confused.

So we proceeded to find a special shop for Timm who wanted to buy something for the trip, it was closed. I then decided to head to the next three known addresses (from one of the books) to get back onto Route 66, and finally found one in Pasadena (we must have taken a bigger detour for the shop. The sun had set but we were ON OUR WAY. A little tired and disappointed, I asked Timm to do the rest of the driving. I told him “the book” said we should get off I-15 just a bit north of Devore, CA.

THERE IT WAS, what we had always imagined the road had become. It was a deserted two lane road with five foot road paintings in the middle of the lanes indicating that this truly was the road of the past.

We passed old forgotten mailboxes and noticed that another road was adjacent to ours, and it was blocked off and neglected. It was sad and cool at the same time. We got out, looked at the stars, and marveled at how much this reminded us of a scene from “Cars”. We were stoked!

That only continued for about 10 miles, but it was worth the wait.

Simply put – have a plan

By Steve Stewart on July 21, 2008

You can’t reach SUCCESS unless you have a plan, otherwise how will you know that you have finished? – Steve Stewart

KEEP WITH THE PLAN

By Steve Stewart on July 10, 2008

Schedule got changed?  Something “come up”?  Did a phone call keep your dominos from falling in line the way you had set it up in your “to-do” list?  What did you do?

Fill the new hole?

I always felt like I had to move everything up the list to fill the new hole that was just created by the “bad news” or unexpected event.  Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?  I am discovering that this is not always the best solution.

Example: I plan out my week on Monday: get my resources together, confirm meetings, the normal Monday grind.  Then I find out Tuesday afternoon that my Wednesday schedule will have to be cancelled.  No problem, I can move everything up a day and do some unscheduled work on Friday.  Sounds like an excellent idea!  So I re-schedule travel plans, reports, etc.  I spend about 90 minutes to do this, and it doesn’t always work out (the schedules of others can’t be changed as easily as mine).

Or keep with the plan?

Or I can KEEP WITH THE PLAN.  I keep Thursday and Friday the way I planned, and throw some unscheduled work into Wednesday’s 9-5.  I saved myself 90 minutes of phone calls, hotel cancellations, and my brain cells are used to create new thoughts instead of re-working the old stuff.

Remain productive

This experience is working it’s way into my personal life.  The car battery dies so I have to go to AutoZone first thing the next day.  Or it rains and I can’t mow the lawn when planned.  I can’t slide the family lunch date up in the schedule to fill the newly-opened hole on my list.  So I KEEP WITH THE PLAN and think of something else productive to do.  Idle hands do the devil’s work, and I hate to waste precious time.  There is always some sticky door handle to fix that would make the wife happy, or spending a little extra time with the daughter will go a long way in our relationship.  If they are busy then there is always that book that “I’ll get to someday”.  No cartoons, no Twitter, maybe some music.  More productivity without sacrificing the rest of the day’s activities.

The bottom line

And what about (yes, wait for it….) your money?  Do you have a PLAN for your money?  Yeah, I know that unexpected things come up that cause us to spend money we weren’t expecting to spend.  The car battery wasn’t a planned purchase, but the EMERGENCY FUND was there to catch our slack.  And what a sense of relief to know the money is there.  It’s not a “car repair emergency” AND a “money emergency”, just  a “jump-start the thing and pay for the new battery” thing.  Check!

KEEP WITH A PLAN!  Now go and do the rest of your list.

There are only 3 things you can do with money

By Steve Stewart on June 16, 2008

Save

You say “No duh”, and you would be right. Save for emergencies, purchases, and the future.

Spend

A favorite thing to do. Who doesn’t like to spend money?

Give

The most fun you can have with money!  What could you do if you had no debt, money in the bank, and wanted to help someone in need?  Walk up to a single mom and hand her a $20, for no reason, and try to walk away without smiling.

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