The Pony Express!

I've had a good, productive few months here in south-central Pennsylvania. In addition to taking a pretty good shot at everything on the list of things I wanted to do while staying in one place for a while, I've enjoyed some really good times with friends and reconnected a bit with my family. I've developed a bunch of quality material for use in the future, and set the stage for a longer-term enterprise that I have in mind going forward.

Now, I'm feeling ready to get moving again. To kick-off my next phase of exploration I've lined up a brief but proper little expedition which I've named "The Pony Express!"

You may recall that a couple of my good friends here have a daughter, Samantha, who went to school and is now living in Colorado. I visited with her during my last cross-country road trip, and we talked at length about how sad it was for her that she is in Colorado and her horse Charlie is still in Pennsylvania.

My trusty truck Darth and I are not the kind of guys who sit by while an outrage like that persists, so we have offered to haul her horse from here to there!

Our plan is for Sam to fly here later in the month, to load the horse in a trailer and drive overnight to St. Louis. We'll board Charlie in a "horse motel" over the next night to give him a break, then drive through the following night to reach Fort Collins. As soon as possible after that, Darth will go into over-drive for the cruise back here to Pennsylvania. Overall, I expect this mini-expedition will take less than a week.

I'm really delighted that Sam's sister Kelsie has signed on for the trip. Not ony is she a qualified horsewoman who can help with horse care along the way (for which I am zero-qualified!) but it will be great to have a third driver/navigator/sleeper in the rotation.

Kelsie will also make the return drive with me after we leave Sam and Charlie in Colorado, which will be really helpful to me and makes Darth very happy to be able to do what he does best: Cruising almost non-stop, and not limited by my solo-driving stamina!

We've got a little bit of "getting ready" to do with the horse trailer and a few logistics, but overall it looks like The Pony Express should be pretty simple to plan, prepare and execute. It should also be an excellent little "shake-out" cruise for Darth and me. We've been stationary long enough and are ready to return to "road mode" together.

Looking forward to being mobile again, I've been cooking up a great, slightly complicated and possibly epic summer road trip... Stay tuned!