Brian is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and currently finishing up his Master's Thesis in labor history at Rutgers University on something pretentious and socialist. Aside from being one of the smartest kids I know, Brian is also one of the most athletic, and a complete heartthrob. Brian is the mastermind behind the entire trip. The person who will guide me from Virginia to Oregon, over treacherous mountains, and through unforgiving Midwest towns. I can't believe I am putting my life in the hands of someone who walks dogs and lacks bagel experience.
This is me:
I am currently a senior majoring in history at the most hippie communist university in the nation. My athletic ability peaked when I was a teenager, and my physical prowess peaked when I was in my early twenties. Now I am just washed up, a shell of my former self. I am fatter, slower, and lazier than I have ever been, and I am convinced I have the body of a 60 year old man.
This is Random Dude:
Random Dude, aka Giggs, graduated from Johns Hopkins, which produced such notable alumni as Mike Bloomberg, Woodrow Wilson, Madeleine Albright, Frank Oppenheimer, and all time Jeopardy! champion Brad Rutter. Giggs is currently a teacher in Baltimore, and in his free time likes to stay awesome by making people stand on chairs and shotgun beers. A ritual all Hopkins men share (Wilson had done the same thing to Taft and Roosevelt some 95 years earlier after he annihilated them in the 1912 election.) Giggs was asked to go on this trip in June and agreed to join us under the condition that, "we don't half-ass it, and we go all the way." Giggs will most likely pull a Giggs* two months before we leave and not return phone calls, emails, texts, and telegrams leaving only Tyrrell and myself to undertake this adventure.
Two years ago, Tyrrell had this wondrous plan to bike across the country with a mutual friend. The plans fell through as the mutual friend became gainfully employed. Every so often when I would see Tyrrell he would bring up riding across the country. Finally in May he convinced me to do this in the summer of 2010. Me, nearing the end of my IRR date and feeling like I have lacked any significant challenge since I left the Corps, decided this would be the perfect opportunity to test myself both mentally and physically, and to go on one last adventure before I enter the real world. Through this blog, we hope to track our progress and setbacks of our training.
This blog is dedicated to holding on to the last part of our youth. The part of our youth that is not yet inhibited by jobs, family, friends, girlfriends, and most of all, life. It is the part of our youth that we will soon lose as we brace ourselves for the inevitable "kick-in-the-groin" that is the 9-5 working world.
*Giggs- To renege on plans. Usually by never answering phone calls or texts.
