Driving to the motherland

Sorry I am so lame in posting this a month after the event but I really wanted to include the videos I took. So I went to set it up and my camera only shoots in .mov which is for quicktime. Problem is that file tipe is too large for this blog. Anyway, after a month of searching I came upon a free video converter online called prism and it worked fantastically so here goes. I can't remember the dates now but starting the Thursday before Martin Luther King day I drove up to Michigan to visit Jeremy, Stacy, and Andrew. The drive was excellent and I was making great time until I hit Ohio and everything was freezing over. Once I drove onto my first iced up overpass and my back end whipped out I realized I should probably slow down. Then as I was driving 35mph through the middle of Ohio at 1 in the morning my tire blew out. As I stepped outside with no coat, gloves or hat I realized why everything was frozen; it was the coldest I have been in a long time. I jumped back in the car and put on all my gear looking like Ralphie from Christmas Story. I began to change my tire in the freezing cold, pitch black. Soon after I started a State Trooper pulled up and had his lights on me and then assisted with holding the lug nuts and screwing them back in as my gloves were far to big for the task. All in all it took me maybe 25 minutes and I was back on the road. At this time I would like to thank BMW for being genius enough to making changing a tire so simple with things like full size spare tires and jacks that actually fit into the car to raise it, no guessing on where to place it. Now I had to finish the drive to Michigan. All total the drive is 900 miles and I was on par in doing it in 11 hours point to point. But as I had to change a tire and drive from the bottom of Ohio up going 35 it took me 16 hours. I arrived at 4 in the morning and promptly passed out on their couch. The trip was amazing and it worked out that I got to see William "Chilly" Dopp ,one of my best friends, on his birthday. As well as seeing Will Miller, my other best friend, and his girlfriend Sam Howard on her birthday. Being able to hang out with everyone was great I also got to eat at the Dark Horse with the Long family and Kyle. I also decided to put some new rubbers on my car, I bought 4 very nice Pirelli 5000 series tires from discount tire. The drive back was more smooth as their wasn't the freeze going down on the roads, I had learned that the temp was -20 when I had to change my tire. The time it took coming back was 12 hours, but I had come back a different way and it was longer by about 80 miles. I had drove up through SC, NC, KY, OH,IL,MI; I drove down IL,KY,TN,GA. Overall I think I liked the way up a little bit more as it wa smore country side where the way down which I did like as well was more big cities. The most important thing I realized on the trip though was that I am a driver. I loved driving alone and for such a great distance I really want to start making road trips and as corny as it sounds I would like to get a picture of myself in front of every state welcoming sign.

So these are the videos that I made. I am pretty delighted by my camera and what I did. The camera is a 10 megapixel Kodak that also takes video in 720p, which is awesome and for only $250 is a deal you can't beat.