I am totally outclassed.

Don at the Badlands.

Bank statement

Its about time to get back to reality. I am in Wausau tonight and will drive back to Chicago in the morning. Ill try to get things posted over the next few days. Maybejust a link to an album. There are stories to tell but I am way too tired to shout them out onto the internet. Im sure Ill just end up repeating myself ;)

Reality... I laughed just now when I went online to check my bank account. You can trace my trip out to California via CC charges at gas stations.

Cutting the vacation short a day. Ill be back in the office on Thursday. I didn't worry the entire trip about it, but the instant I got out of the car I can't stop thinking of what I need to get done and the people that I have left to get it done for me.

Looks like wausau

Wisconsin trumps CO.

Ugh... Hellllo Wisco!

Hellll Wisco!

7 hours to wausau via dubuke/madison

Things are starting to look like the midwest again.

Stuck in traffic outside Denver, but we dont care so much.

FWD: 11990ft

FWD: CO just won the title from utah

18.5 hrs from wausau.

CO Away we go!

Stopped. Some lame city in Utah.

Barstow is the definiton of dry heat. Nicest 105 ive ever felt.

The Langlois are drinking by the pool. Im going for 8 hours of real sleep.

Hotel wants me to pay to use the internet. so ill update later when its free

Looks like we will be there in 11 hours, road time. So we might have to do some improv sight seeing.

6930 feet high.

I mean feet!!!

6755 miles high!

Rawlings!

Attacking the Day.

I was too tired to wait for these two photos to upload last night. ITs 5am here. Lets see how seeon we can get on the road.

Oh and we see the desert today. Starting right now, everything we do and see will be new to me. So... maybe there will be a lot more photos.

One Love

Here we are. Well, more like, there we were. Somewhere in SD Stopped by Mithell to get Don and Chris a photo in front of the Corn Palace. We are only a few hours from the Badlands. Its 7am cst as I write. It will be an hour less once we cross into mountain time.

We will stop near the Missouri River for some breakfast.

He then picked a fight with a Buffalo at least 10 times his size.

As Kenny says, Peace, Love. He does say something like that doesn't he?

***

So we continued on. Again a minor point of interest would be seeing a Buffalo while I am out here. I have instead seen a antelope, mountain goat, horses, cows, prairie dogs and owls. Not to forget the Camel. But no Buffalo. I was promised there is one at the petting zoo attached to our camp site.

We are here at Devils tower. Tomorrow we make our way to LA. no good posts until sometime tomorrow... I mean Friday. after we check into the hotel I think

Setting up camp. Expect some real posts after dark.

Rushmore, check. Next up. devils tower.

Walldrug was a bust.

Fartin around the badlands.

Test test are my updates hitting?

Attacking the day. 26 miles to SD.

5% of one way of the trip down. Chris says if this was a video game we would have just finished the tutorial.

Rally Rally Rally

All together, ready to go. Don didn't think we would fit all the gear into the car without the saddlebag. He has never owned a Subaru. We are All packed. He is gassing her up now.

Little to no moon might make the night driving a little more difficult, but it also means that we will have some awesome stargazing.

12 hours from our door here in Wausau to Interior SD. We may or may not have internet along the way, but this is the modern age, we will have no power, but we will have wifi at the camp grounds. Awesome right?


A quick thanks to everyone staying behind, but staying supportive. Friends, Coworkers, Family. We will see you all soon, and you will hear from me plenty.
Thanks E and Kassandra for covering me at work. I hope you enjoy the special treat I left for you. Chuck is holding onto it until you guys seem like work is more murder than usual.

One love, Open Road.

Getting gas in oshkosh, so are the cows.

Whoo-Hoo!

Grand adventures, grand music. Cheers Ennio morricone.

Oh, leaving home always makes me think of home. As I gear up for the upcoming trip I am thinking of Wisconsin. A wonderful place, don’t dispute it because a lot of people think so.

A friend linked me to a page that made me laugh. The link is below. Here is a joke from the site.

It's Pronounced "Oconomowoc", Don'tcha Know?

Two tourists were driving through Wisconsin. As they approached Oconomowoc, they started arguing about the pronunciation of the town's name. They argued back and forth until they stopped for lunch.

"As they stood at the counter, one tourist asked the employee, 'Before we order, could you please settle an argument for us? Would you please pronounce where we are . . . very slowly?'

"The blond leaned over the counter and slowly said, 'Burrrr gerrrr Kiiiing.' "

http://www.bratwurstpages.com/dialect.html

One Love.

Ain't no Garbage in this house.

I finished my first time through P90X over the weekend. All in all I dropped another 12 lbs. That put me at 204 this morning. I think after the trip out west Ill finally drop below 200. I’m think that means this is the lightest I have been in at least 14 years.

I intend to go a second time through the program after I get back. Not for the weight loss aspect of it. I think once I drop under 200 I won’t have a specific goal. I mean… I read somewhere that Spiderman is 5”10” and 167.

Teach me to be bad.

I'm no audiophile. I don't have the best stereo... admittedly I use broken headphones most of the time. I don't have a generally appreciated taste in music. My car stereo becomes a battle ground if I am not driving alone. Often resulting in conversation... or NPR quietly playing.

But its the weekend, and with the weekend comes one of my more favorite ways to spend a night. Drinking quietly and previewing hours of music on Itunes. Occasionally resulting in a Red Hot Chili Peppers greatest hits album or something obscure that sometimes I even question the purchase of.

It is an amazing night out tonight, I am finally getting some serious use out of the patio furniture that has spent more time under the rain than my ass. 20 oz. Into a 22 oz. Bottle of Scrumpy's cider I am listening to some free shit that Itunes and Starbucks put out. A soundtrack for the summer is what they called it. Its possible they anticipate a high suicide rate this summer? I feel like I am on the set of an Old Navy commercial.

…

The breeze is coming in now. The music has been changed. Thea Gilmore is saving me from a Starbucks summer. Although she has a folk sound, almost Appalachian in style. Singer/songwriter stuff always sounds a little melancholy, yet I don't feel like slamming my palms into the sides of my head when I am listening to this kind of thing. She is worthwhile, try “teach me to be bad”. For some reason it makes me think of the theme song to True Blood.

I did say I enjoy the quiet these nights, and that includes my thoughts. So its time for A Langlois Man to finish this post and do what he came here to do.

G'night

I am Bison.

I haven’t been eating all that well lately. And by that I mean I haven’t really been eating enough. I’ve been on this fitness kick, and dieting at the same time and the combo has put me in a calorie deficit. Ok all of that just means that I am physically tired. It wasn’t a huge deal, my performance wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t really feeling like I was getting the best out of my workouts.
This brings me to last night. Last night I think I ate more food than I have eaten in months. Steak. Bison Filet. Among other things… mushrooms, French fries, an ice-cream Sunday and quite a bit of Spoons steak as well. Yeah I was eating off other peoples plates last night.
So as everyone else was stuffed beyond belief… I oddly was not. I went home and counter to what you would think I had one of the best work outs of the last two months. Which got me thinking…

I’m no expert on Native American culture. I only know the broad strokes… you might even believe that I only know the stereotypical shit. And completely independent of my thoughts on Native Americans I also had a thought regarding cannibalism. Bear with me.
I was arguably starving last night, and I think I recall both of the above things having reference to taking the essence or power or strength or whatnot from the animal they are eating. That’s got to be in the culture… any culture somewhere… give me a culture that fits that thought and I’ll say that’s the one I am thinking about.
Long story short- I was Bison last night.

And I should probably be eating more.

BoneSaw

A Langlois Man is laughing about this today. I'm reeaaaddy for this road trip. BoneSaw is too.




Hey Freakshow!
I've got nothing witty to say to go along with this post. Just enjoy this shit.

The Open Road

On the open road: Obsessions beget obsessions. Not long ago I became fascinated with Thomas Jefferson and all the amazing things about him. “There is a reason they carved his face into a mountain in South Dakota” a friend said to me. This statement lead to my first adventure beyond the banks of the Mississippi River.

I was on my way to see a man. A man carved into the side of a mountain. Rushmore: The climax of my favorite Hitchcock film, and where Nick Cage found the hidden Indian gold.
There were minor goal set along the way. Eat Buffalo in as many forms as possible. See the Badlands. But at the time, the most important goal was to get to that mountain.
But then again, like all great adventures, the thing to go looking for isn’t always the thing you treasure the most. As the hours and scene passed by I began to fall in love with the journey itself. I was captivated by the seemingly endless rolling landscape. The Mississippi river, the Missouri.

I was overwhelmed by the colossal openness; the wind threatening to whip you off your feet like a childhood bully. A sea of grass dropping down to the ancient jagged rocks as far as you could see. We hiked and climbed through the terrain. I felt truly connected to world around me. Small and insignificant compared to the form of Time and Nature.

We defied the marked path and tested ourselves. There is no match to the awesomeness of what was around us, we simply wanted to throw ourselves into it to see what kind of men we returned as. Could we be the heroes of our minds?
As John climbed to the highest point he could summit I considered safer perches. But this was an adventure and as the wind and Sun assaulted John on his upward climb, I find myself face to face with the Prairie Rattlesnake. The moment possessed me. Wildness still exists, and I was allowed to share its space.

The next day we were going to go see Rushmore. We did see Rushmore, but only after a detour to Wyoming, Devils Tower. The desire to more of the day before was too strong. Finally on the return home we stopped at the mountain, obligation to the mission. A display of what man could do to a mountain in honor the greatness of our nation, while the contradiction, the pink, fat, ignorance walked and rolled on the paved walking paths with their Ben and Jerry’s Ice-cream.

The West has her hooks in me. Soon I will depart on a new adventure from the Great Lakes to the Pacific. I don’t know what to expect, although my hope are high. This will be a space dedicated to that adventure. Don, Chris, Matt and I hope to keep updates posted along the way, so you can join the Langlois Men On the Road.

Memorial Day

I heard a Vet on the radio this morning. He said that Memorial day is not for the troops. They feel it every day. Memorial Day is for the civilians. It is for the people who dont know anyone who has been in combat, or die in combat.
Today is my day to remember the troops. Think about them, and for whatever reason they go into combat, respect their sacrifice.
I do not attempt to measure myself against the bravery and loyalty of a solider. What makes them choose to do what they do... what drives them is beyond my definition of personal sacrifice, civic duty, personal responsibility.

Today I am thinking about the troops.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to EB for helping me with this title. She has been known to feed my ego.

Cheers to Adventure

One thing to know about a Langlois Man is that there is no such thing as being lost. This is a lesson to understand in the coming months. As the days grow longer, and families hit the open road on vacation; The Langlois Men will also take the open road. Destination: Los Angeles. Or is it Santa Barbara.

But to the concept of being lost. You can't be lost, only delayed. A delay is a fantastic classification of time. An inconvenience to most, a delay is unexpected unscheduled time. It is time without structure or expectation. Lost is Adventure and Adventure is the journey.

As far as a mission statement goes. A Langlois Man is a gift to everyone else. A Langlois' perspective on things is invaluable.

-One Love