Whew! We have been busy busy busy! There were the changes to the itinerary, the epic saga (now over) involving the car, Kate’s birthday, my birthday, lots of chasing Marilyn around, on top of research for the trip and, of course, work. 

We’re so glad that we have Sofi (our Subaru) back in our possession. She’s been through a lot over the last few weeks. After paying to have some oil leaks fixed and a new water pump and timing belt put in there was an ‘incident’ where basically there was too much silicone lubricant on one of the moving engine parts and this caused something bad to happen, for a belt to break and for the engine to fall a few inches in the engine compartment. Lucky for us the mechanic guarantees their work, and they took it back in and had it fixed. They had some trouble getting the parts and had to drive to Kentucky on three separate occasions (100 miles each way). We were without the car for about ten days, which wasn’t ideal, but we were not about to complain. We finally got the car back early last week - Kate and I went by and picked it up after work. She has been running well ever since. I’ll definitely be writing up positive reviews about our mechanic on all the big consumer review sites.

Final preparations have begun for our trip. I gave my two week notice at work and Kate and I cleaned out the library’s collection of guidebooks on road trips, Route 66 and every state on our route between Indy and California. We’ve been taking lots of notes and making lots of progress. We’re both very excited about the trip and are counting down the days until we take off. 

I’d been a bit behind with the blogging and the pictures and whatnot - but I’ve put up five new photo galleries from the last two months of activities (birthdays, etc).

Stay tuned for more updates before we hit the road.