Road Trip - The Midnight Riders

Midnight squirrel here…

Although I am typically partial to Georgia because of friends who live down here, but in general, the south is just fantastic. I hope and pray one day to live down here, or at least somewhere in the south. The warm southern air, sweet tea and peaches right off of the tree are heavenly!

Well, today Lisa and I both have interviews. She is going to be talking with another Christian coffee shop owner in downtown Atlanta. Hoping to get a feel for the difference of climate and atmosphere as compared to when we were in the north in Ohio. I am going to be talking with Ruth VanYperen, a Messiah Alumni, about her vocation at North Point community church in the suburbs of Atlanta. Already having talked to her before today, it seems as though North Point has a lot to offer the hustle and bustle of a busy city like Atlanta. Their main objective is to reach out to the community with the Gospel of Christ in order to lead people into relationships with the Lord Jesus Christ. But what is interesting, they try to do everything, down to the bulletins, 150%. Actually, Ruth showed us a video they recently made in order to discuss the issues of wealth and how Christians are to live. They redid the music video for the song “glamorous” by Fergie. The video honestly looked like it had been professionally done. Apparently, the church averages around 12,000 people per Sunday (and this is just one of their 3 campuses!). Other times, the group Passion has held their conferences at their facilities and next year Youth Specialties will be hosting events there as well.

well, after a good morning run in the hot Georgia sun, we are off to the city. Afterwards, the midnight riders are heading north again and hoping to camp out in a state park in the carolina’s. This time WITH a tent that has all the pieces (I purchased one yesterday at Target!).

bye!

The south is more hospitable! We arrived in Georgia today after leaving New Orleans, which everyone was quite thankful for. New Orleans is quite the interesting area — a city highly involved in voodoo and witch craft. We made the mistake of walking to Cafe du Monte this morning (a cafe notorious for french doughnuts). In walking there we had to pass over Bouborn St. which in the evening is crazy and busy, but in the morning reeks of stale liquor and vomit. Yuck! However the french beignets, fried dough piled high with powdered sugar, was well worth it. (At least I “The Elipse” thought so, everyone else wandered elsewhere to where they served real, healthy breakfast).

Before we introduce you to our new locations, now is a good time to tell you about our travels into New Orleans and our night time drive. To begin we had trouble getting out of Oklahoma because we got really poor directions from a guy we interviewed. Oklahomies are just bad direction people. We asked some Oklahomies where we could get ice cream and they insisted there was no such place. We joyfully finished our tasty frozen treats as we drove into the night swearing to never ask for directions again. The drive went well, we took turns driving and sleeping throughout the trip. The only mishaps were when Rt. 65 took us into a middle of no-where Louisiana town. The whole town consisted of about a 1/2 mile stretch of road and the speed dropped quickly from 45 to 25. Yet in the process of decreasing our speed, the one cop patroling that tiny little strip of road at 4:30 am pulled us over. One of the midnight riders got a ticket =(. No questions from the cop. No “hey why are you 4 girls driving a Maryland car in my town at 4:30 am?”. Nothing. Just a stinkin ticket. After that and a lot of one lane roads we finally arrived in New Orleans…kind of.

We found the camp ground we were intending on camping at but when we unrolled the tent we realized we did not have any tent poles, thus no camping for the Midnight Riders. After playing with a gecko for a bit we rolled back up our pole-less tent and headed towards the city to find a hotel. We found a nicely priced place right outside the French Quater but couldn’t for the life of us actually get into the city. We crossed over the city about 2 times (each time taking about 40 minutes) until we got some help from some locals at an Arby’s. Oklahomies = bad direction givers. New Orleanians = good direction givers. We got to our hotel but were too early to check in. While we waited we swam and sat by the hotel pool relaxing. We didn’t spend too much time in the city, just enough to acquaint ourselves with the area.

And so here we are at our next stop, Atlanta, Georgia. The ride up was nice. Pam found an Alaska license plate which I think has secured her the winning spot in the game, unless we pass someone from Hawaii and then Ashley and I might have a fighting chance. We are now at the house of Abbie’s friends Ruth and spent the evening playing candy land and chutes and ladders with Ruth’s nieces –very refreshing. Oh, and our first home cooked meal! Very delicious.

*We also want to say “hi” to Ms. Zimmerman’s class. We’re glad your watching our journey and we hope your having as much fun in class as we are on our road trip.

Lisa rolling back up the pole-less tent:

Abbie playing with Larry (our new pet gecko):

Ashley, Pam, and Lisa wandering around New Orleans:

Midnight Squirrel here …or abbie. So i’ve had plenty of hours awake the last 48 hours and here are my thoughts.

i believe that the skyscraper came first, not the elevator.

People who have had the chance to ‘name’ certain things need to be more creative. Such as, a scarecrow, jambayla, stew or an automobile. (think about those ones)

It’s clear why people would choose to live in the country and NOT in a city.

Southern food is much better than food up north, minus my mother’s cooking OF COURSE!
example- I had a chicken ceaser salad last night and in Oklahoma they put pasta in it as well!
AND in Memphis, on their BBQ sandwiches they also put cole slaw on top of the BBQ..this is amazing.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer quite possibly was a modern day prophet.

How do we let our “lights” shine before all men and yet not let our left hand know what our right is doing?

Why do a good majority of pentacostal churches in the south have buildings the size of corporate buildings?

Why is it everyone else in the country, minus pennsylvania drivers, know how to merge onto a highway.

Never, ever drive down a random state road through Louisianna with four college girls at 3:00 a.m

And last but not least…New Orleans needs more missionaries.

You may think you’ve been going the right way…

but you could be wrong.

You may think you have a working tent in your trunk…

but you also could be very wrong.

More on the story of New Orleans later… now, a shower and a nap. whew.

…but we aren’t positive because we didn’t feel like paying the money to search for him at Graceland. However, we did spend the day in Memphis and had a great time. We wandered around the city and explored the fun sites. Pam and Abbie were pretty excited to play some guitars at the Gibson guitar factory. They said that the accoustic guitars “played like butter.” We then went to The Peabody, a hotel that is known for the ducks that hang out in the lobby’s foutain. The ducks live up on the roof and take the elevator down each morning and spend the day chillin in the fountain until they are ushered back upstairs in the evening. They were cool ducks! After a fantastic meal of true Memphis BBQ pork we headed out to Arkansas. Initially we planned to camp out, but due to the potential thunderstorms, we found ourselves at a cheap motel for the evening. Tomorrow we head out to Tulsa for our second inteview and to see the new Pirates of the Carribean movie.

On our way into Tennesse yesterday Pam made a request to stop at this renown location.

It was well worth the stop!

Our day in Memphis…

The ducks in the hotel fountain:

…I lied, we did find Elvis:

We’re sitting at this little cafe in Franklin, Tenn (about 30 mins south of Nashville), the coolest place ever! Not only are the biscuts fantastic but this is the hub for the Christian music industry. We are staying with two of Ashley’s friends, two amazing people, one who has been signed with Gotee records. They shared with us their stories about trusting God and how he brought them to this place in life…what an encouragment! It is neat to see that the big names in Christian music aren’t living in huge hollywood houses with 10 mile long driveways but doing exactly what Christians should be doing…living in community. It’s such a neat town! Which is refeshing after our day in Cincinnati. What a scary and sketchy city. We drove there yesterday after leaving Chicago to go to an interview I (Lisa) had at a coffee shop. However, our first great big frustration, after driving into the city, my interviewee wasn’t there. Luckly I had another contact I knew about, and Les at the Rohe Street Cafe was willing to do an interview on the spot.
The interview was very encouraging, I found out that in wanting to start a coffee shop I don’t need to have an excessive amount of extra cash to start a business. Les and his friends, after finishing college, had a vision and asked others to help support this vision. Thus even with my 60 thousand worth of college loans, God can still make this dream possible…I just can’t do it on my own. Les also told me that in order to make it in the cafe world you need something to set you apart. Thus, I am trying to convince Pam to join me in this endeavor and be my bakery chef.
Anyways we are off to Memphis today to meet Elvis.

As for the Licence plate game….we are all neck and neck (we left the real scrores in the car).

-”The Eclipse”

Here are the pictures of the undescribably sweet fountain we played at today…

Oh, and a thought to ponder:

Which came first: the skyscraper or the elevator?

Up nice and early this morning and we headed into chicago. The rest of the girls pretty much passed out for most of the drive, more than likely because it was all farm and flat land for over three hours. I (midnight squirrel or abbie) took the wheel for the first time this trip and headed into the windy city, although not to windy today! The Lord blessed us with one of the most beautiful days thus far, sunny and 85! It took a little over four hours to get into the city..more or less from having to stop at random gas stations searching for the cheapest gas, $3.93 was the most exspensive we have paid thus far, and we pray it does not get any higher!

I was more than surprised at how beautiful of a city Chicago really was! Most of the people, while walking downtown, kept to themselves but were delightfully friendly. We saw some amazing architecture and awesome fountians down near Lake Michigan. We took tons of pictures and video footage throughout the day (we will post pics soon!). The two huge fountains we saw were called the “crown fountains” in millenial park. Here is where two huge blocks about a story or two high had water spewing out on each side and had video images of peoples faces upclose. These faces would change randomly and what made it even cooler, these faces would put their lips together to spit and then the water would shoot out of their mouth!! The BEST part of it there were TONS of little kids running and playing through the water and laughing fantastically! I am convinced this is what heaven will be like. Kids of all races playing in giant sprinklers in the spring sun, laughing, running and enjoying the day!

anyways, we are hanging at ashley’s friends house who she went to africa with her sophomore year at messiah. Tomorrow morning, up nice and early and headed to cincinati for an interview with a Christian Coffee shop owner.

Tons of fun on the way…

We have arrived in Toledo, Ohio after leaving PA this afternoon and have just finished a very late dinner. Today’s trip only consisted of two little mishaps on the road; we missed one turn and then got some faulty directions that set us back an hour,but hey, “its all in the experience”. And so with that little motto we are doing pretty good. Tomorrow we head out to Chicago to do some exploring. Not much of an adventure yet, but thats why we have been doing a good job of entertaining ourselves in the car. Todays tally in the “Licence plate” game (a game where we compete to find different state licence plates) is as followed: Ashley in the lead with 31, Pam close second with 26, and I’m coming in at 23. Pam’s showing off quite the eye for picking out licence plates…even finding a U.S government plate. Abbie is serving as our judge and I have learned that covering the eyes of other passangers is illegal. Keep watching to see who wins, we still have a lot of state licence plates to spot.

Lisa (The Eclipse)

The midnight riders are now fully equipped with nick names:
Abbie - Midnight Squirrel
Ashley - Morning Weasel
Pam - Noon Ox
Lisa - “The Eclipse”

Hey ya’ll! well our team “midnight riders” has been getting ready for our big adventure along with graduation in two days! Each one of us are pretty pumped to get out on the road and have a blast. Some of the things we have been doing are prepairing maps so as to know where to venture, making tons of phone calls, hoping to feed some homeless people, play music on street corners and yes, talk to awesome people about their vocation!
I’ve actually been surprised at how open and willing most people have been to help us out. There are TONS of opportunities out there, we just need to be willing to go after them it seems.

Oh one of the other things we have done is a sort of fundraiser for the trip. Although we want to try and make money while we’re out on the road (by playing music on street corners at night) we wanted to hit up messiah to see if people would be willing to help us out. So two different nights our team went door to door through a couple residence halls and we asked for spare change…. we all we’re shocked because people donated almost a 150 dollars! This is certainly a blessing seeing as how all four of us will be graduating and have NO jobs as of yet.

Our first stop is in Toledo, OH then off to chicago for a few days..hoping for good weather and maybe a cubs game?
Oklahoma, tennessee, new orleans, atlanta and NC…all to come!

midnight squirrel (abbie)