The not so short tale of my trip.

I'm still working on catching up a little. I finally was able to read some blog posts today (not that I'm even thinking about reading all of last week's), I worked, I had a meeting, I made dinner. It was all normal, real life stuff.

But before I get too far back into real life, I wanted to do a couple trip round up posts. Today's will be more of an overview. My goal is also to do a few picture round ups as well.  We'll see how it all goes though.

Feel free to ask any questions you have about what I saw or did. I'll also include links to stories I wrote so you can catch up some that way, if you want.

Saturday, April 14/Sunday April 15:
After spending the day up Bellingham, I met up with my fellow travelers to catch a red eye to Philly. We left Seattle at 10pm and landed in Philly at 6am. We left the plane and plotted our strategy (I kid you not, computers were out less than 50 feet from our gate). Then we dove in.

We had breakfast at Mayfair Diner, visited downtown Philly (Independence Hall included) and went to a Phillies game. Two members of our crew even talked their way into the press box. We then left the game to drive to Gettysburg. My professor's dad gave us a sunset audio tour over the phone. He's a historian and it was an amazing experience.

Monday, April 16:
After staying in Frederick, Maryland, we drove to Roanoke, Virginia where one member of our team split off to cover the 5-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting. After doing an interview in Roanoke, the other three of us drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway and eventually on to Asheville, North Carolina. After checking into our hotel, we headed into town, met people from a revival, and had an amazing dinner at Tipelo Honey. We even called in to join the rest of my class for a meeting.

Tuesday, April 17:
We spent the morning in Asheville following up on some story leads. Then we drove to Greensboro, North Carolina and met up with our missing team member. John Edwards trial selection was going on and the head of my department wanted to visit the Civil Rights Museum (where the lunchroom sit-ins started). I spent that time working on my story. Then we drove onto Raleigh.

Wednesday, April 18:
We had two interviews Wednesday morning, with an electronic polling company and a group organizing efforts to fight Amendment One in NC. After the interviews, we traveled on to Charlotte, NC to hear Mittens (a.k.a. Mitt Romney) at an impromptu event. My first real presidential event. Afterwards we drove all the way from Charlotte to Pittsburgh.

Thursday, April 19:
Thursday morning my professor and the head of the department flew back home and one of my classmates flew in. She had an awful three flight overnight trip, so after she got a nap in, the three team members there headed into Pittsburgh. We did a cool piece about Primanti Brothers, originators of the lunch in a sandwich. I'm still in recovery.

Friday, April 20:
After picking up the last team member to fly east and organizing ourselves, we headed towards Ohio. Along the way we stopped in Lisbon, a tiny town just over the border from Pennsylvania. We also made a pit stop in Canton (mostly for internet) before driving up to Cleveland to stay for the night.

Saturday, April 21:
We got up early and went to the West Side Market in Cleveland. I had a blast taking pictures and people watching, leaving the story chasing to the rest of the team, which would be around longer. We left Cleveland for Erie, where we had lunch and I caught my first flight. I made it Philly only to run through the airport and see my plane pulling away from the gate. It was like a scene from a bad movie. Luckily the airlines paid for my hotel.

Sunday, April 22:
I had to get up before 5am EST (a.k.a. 2am PST) to catch my flight. I had a layover in Phoenix and then flew home first class the second half of the trip. My roommate came to the airport with my car, I changed as she drove to meet her parents for lunch, at which point I drove safely as fast as I could to a wedding for one of my closest guy friends from college. I literally got there in time to give him a hug and snag a seat in the back. I stayed at the wedding for three hours after which I came home for a call with the department head on a story and collapsed into bed at 8:30pm. I was asleep before 9. And had been up 22 hours. Crazy.

I feel mostly recovered now and am finally starting to catch up, at least a little. But I imagine it will be a few days or the rest of the quarter before I feel recovered.

So, what exciting developments have I missed while I was gone? Catch me up!