Seattle here I come!

So I am currently on the plane and heading towards Seattle!! And I can’t wait to get there.  Thursday and Friday were both hectic and busy days.  Thursday was my last day of work before leaving and after work I had to move all my stuff out of my current house.  I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to rent a place or buy a house so I just rented a storage unit and moved all my stuff there until I get back. But I finally got all my stuffed moved and got home around 11:00PM.  Friday I woke up and cleaned out my car, vacuumed, washed, and cleaned it all up so it wasn’t dirty while it was sitting in the garage for the next three months.  Then I headed to Evansville to pick up a few last things for the trip and headed back home. Then I had to go visit my sister, my niece and nephew, and my grandparents so I could say bye.  After that I went to visit my aunt and uncle Rich and Mary Lou.  My uncle Rich is a big reason of what has been pushing me to prepare and participate in the Journey of Hope.  About two years ago he had a severe stroke and became disabled.  Seeing and hearing them talk about their daily struggles to get through each day just makes what I am doing that much more real and important.  Them, like many of us, were just living a normal life without a worry in the world until he had a stroke and their lives were forever changed.  Which just proves that our message of acceptance and understanding, which will be promoted across America, is that much more important, because any of us at anytime could be just one health condition or one spinal injury from becoming disabled?  I will bike the entire summer with my uncle in the back of my mind!  After leaving their and saying all my goodbyes I finally made it home and was able to finish packing.  When I got done it all started to sink in and it was crazy to see that I had the next 2.5 months of my life packed in a duffle bag! But sadly enough I didn’t get done packing until 2:30AM and I had to leave my house to head to the Indy Airport at 3:30AM.  So I was only able to get about half an hour of sleep, which made the 3 hour drive to Indy from St. Anthony a little rough.  My first flight flew out of Indy and landed in Las Vegas with no problems.  Yeah I was in Las Vegas for the first time, exciting right??  Except I was stuck in an airport the whole time so I didn’t get to go explore the city but after all it is Vegas so they had slots everywhere in the airport.  So I naturally had to play a few of them, and actually came out $100 ahead! So the trip has started off great so far minus the lack of sleep!!  Our plane in Vegas was delayed an hour due to mechanical issues but we are now in the air heading to Seattle.  I was able to get about another hour of sleep on the flight to Vegas so now I am running off of only 1.5 hours of sleep in the past 36 but pure excitement and adrenaline is running through my body keeping me awake and going.  I cannot wait to start this awesome summer and journey across America!!  We have a four day orientation in Seattle before we actually start our Journey of Hope across America, so as always I will keep you all posted on what we are doing as a team!! Until next time, remember that we all have disabilities just some of us are fortunate enough to hide them and others are not!! “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.”