Bob and his icre cream

When I was planning my trip to North Carolina, it didn’t seem very far away looking on the map. However, I learned firsthand that 3,000 miles is no joke. Luckily, I had a good friend of my family’s Ronnie Alves, or Uncle Ronnie as I like to call him, and one of our crew guys Bob Newman along to keep me laughing the whole trip.

All my life my dad has taught me with what I like to call “the sink or swim method.” I didn’t expect him to teach me how to drive our truck and trailer any other way. We left my parents house in Corning, Calif., on Sunday. I drove the truck and trailer about 20 minutes down the road to our shop in Orland, with my dad giving me pointers along the way. After we fueled up in Orland, my dad set me loose across the country. I am pretty honored that my dad trusts me the way he does. Plus, Uncle Ronnie used to be a truck driver, so he knew I was in good hands. Uncle Ronnie likes to say that he is “overqualified” for the job of driving our truck and trailer.

I have to admit that driving the truck and trailer made me a little nervous at first, however it didn’t take me long to feel right at home. While traveling, we received some pretty funny looks when people would see two men riding along in the truck and a young lady driving. I got a kick out of seeing some of the reactions to this arrangement. For instance, there was one cute old lady, who looked over at us while passing us on the freeway and she just started smiling. As she drove passed she continued to look back and smile.

Uncle Ronnie is one of my favorite people and I really enjoyed having him along on the trip. We always like to laugh and joke with each other. Part of our joking around with each other always includes arguing. We argued about everything on the trip: what to listen to on the radio, how many more miles it was to North Carolina, whether we were half way or not, and anything and everything we could think to argue about. I also believe we wore out the knobs on the heater and air conditioning in the truck with the two of us changing it from hot to cold every 30 seconds over our 3,000-mile trip. I was freezing the whole trip and Uncle Ronnie kept saying that he was so hot he was about to go crazy. Bob and Ronnie have not known each other all that long, but Bob joined right in with all the arguing. What a circus we had going in the truck!

We pulled into Stoneville, N.C., at 6:30 on Wednesday morning. I was exhausted at this point and then we needed to find a place to leave our trailer so we began searching for Gann Custom. We finally got to bed around nine that morning. After sleeping for only a couple hours, we weren’t getting much accomplished on Wednesday at the Gann’s and I had to take Uncle Ronnie to the airport at four p.m. on Thursday morning, so we decided to call it a night.

Bob and I plan on staying here in North Carolina until next Friday, so we can work on having four motors and our bike all ready to go for Gainesville. Then we are going to leave the truck and trailer at the Gann’s and fly home. We have only been here a couple of days and we have already had lots of adventures! I am usually pretty good at finding my way around, but I have had a hard time here. I think it is because all the trees. It all looks so similar to me. Yesterday, we were trying to find our way from our hotel in Eden, N.C., to the Gann’s shop. I knew we had messed up somewhere when the big sign said “Welcome to Virginia.” I am having a blast here, and I am excited to be able to spend some time with the Gann family. The bad weather is about to role in and they are calling for snow. Wish me luck to stay warm; my California roots are not used to this cold weather! Talk to everyone soon!