A small set of photos from driving Nate’s car cross-country. He, his wife, their two cats, and their two month old son moved from LA to Chicago, and I offered to drive their car since I was scheduled to have nothing better to do and I LOVE roadtrips.

This is a mix of stuff shot with my good camera and with my phone, since the weather was such that the one day I had for wandering around Chicago, the weather sucked.

Speaking of the weather sucking, you can see how bad the snow was up on Vail Pass when I came through, but there was a stretch of I-70 on the way to Green River, Utah that was much, much worse.

Thunder, lighting, snow, hail, sleet, freezing rain, and at one point I was driving through a solid inch of unplowed snow. It was insane, and I’m lucky that car has damn good traction or I would have been in a ditch.

If I hadn’t been staying with step-relatives in Denver and Omaha for two of the three nights I was on the road, I might have looked at the weather and taken I-40 through Albuquerque instead, though that would have put me right in the middle of a bunch of tornadoes on I-44 the next day anyway.

Anyway, all in all it was a great trip, I got to get my roadtrip on without putting more miles on my car, and I got to hang with my friends in Chicago and stuff myself silly for a couple days when I got in. Good times.

Photographically, I focused mostly on the drive through Nevada this time, which is through an otherworldly beautiful part of the desert where there is literally nobody around for hundreds of miles. So spectacular and incredibly relaxing.

There’s also some good shots from my hike to Titus Lake with my dad. For two people whose combined age is 100 and who have two good legs between us, we did pretty damn well.

Photos are from my D50, but a bunch of fun ones from the iPhone mixed in. If the slideshow below doesn’t feel like cooperating, the set is here on Flickr.

I’m unemployed and gas costs $4.60 a gallon, so what better time is there to take a road trip to Idaho to see my dad?

Actually, I’m road-tripping for three reasons:

1. Changeable plane tickets are expensive, even more so than the gas to get the 861 miles between here and Sun Valley.
2. You could not pay me to fly into the itty bitty airport in Sun Valley in an itty bitty plane that has to nose-dive between GIANT mountains to land, and the closest normal airports are Boise (2.5 hour drive) and Salt Lake City (5 hour drive).
3. Given the general hassle that flying has become over the last few years, for a trip of less than 1,000 miles, I’d really rather drive if I have the time.

So tonight, I’m stopping in Vegas and, per my Evil Plot, going to see The Dark Knight in IMAX. Then I’ll get up and drive the rest of the way to Sun Valley, and all will be well.

Tales of fishing, biking, swimming, relaxing, and possibly hiking and rafting if my foot decides to cooperate, to come.

It all started when a coworker came up to me tuesday and said, “You’re big into tech stuff, right?” Always dangerous words, but I had no idea how dangerous they would prove this time.

And so it was that he told me of the absolutely absurd deal he got on a really, really nice Panasonic HDTV from a liquidator in Silicon Valley, hired to dispose of some late-2006 model plasmas with little to no wear and tear at low low prices.

How low? Less than half of what the 42″, really high quality plasmas were going for new. Enough that instead of simply getting the television I could afford, I got the entire A/V setup I wanted for the money I’d saved up.

After some hemming and hawing (and coming thisclose to convincing Nate and Liz to be as stupid as I am), I went for the deal. Because it was going to be super-expensive to ship, I convinced Nate to come with me to Menlo Park to pick it up today.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Gigantic Damn Television:

Now since Nate and I are both huge geeks, we looked at the map and realized we were going to only be a few miles from Cupertino. Since we were running a good bit early, we decided to make a quick stop:

And to take our nerdiness officially over the top:

When I asked one Charlie Chaplin the Cat what he thought of this entire endeavor, he pulled this face, which I’ll bet more than a couple of you are pulling right now:

Special thanks to Nate, who not only accompanied me and had the intestinal fortitude to resist purchasing one on the spot (which I surely could not have done), but who helped my half-cripped ass lug the damn thing up to my apartment.

Nate, without you, I couldn’t watch spectacularly awful television in truly spectacular HD.

More TK when I get the HD TiVo (oh you better believe it) and everything else up and running.