So here's the story in a nutshell. I'm living in Cleveland and I get a good job offer, so I take it. Said job is in the San Francisco Bay area. I depart on the afternoon of Saturday, March 12, 2000. I arrive that night at my friends' place in Chicago, where I spend the night. I leave my cat with my good buddy Christian, whose roommate is another good friend of mine, John. John is my copilot on this journey. We leave around 11:00-noon on Sunday. We arrive at my new apartment very late Monday night/Tuesday morning - around midnight. And here are the pictures we took. Click the thumbnails for a bigger image.

	This is me crossing the Mississippi. We didn't even realize that the big river in the background was that particular river until later, but it ended up with a cool significance I guess - east coast to west, or whatever.
	These are signs welcoming us to Iowa, one of the most boring states in the Union. At least Nebraska has Omaha, and Wyoming has Buford and a vulture (more on that later), with some nice scenery in Utah and Nevada. Iowa was basically nothing.
	Nothing worth noting happened in Iowa or Nebraska. Lots of fields. Lots of flat land. John woke me up to see this though. Buford, Wyoming. Population 2. I kid you not. Check out the crappy pics of the sign.
	This is the goddamned vulture I hit in Wyoming around 6:30am local time. From a distance it looked like 3 or 4 crows gathered in the road - something I'd seen a lot of in the past hour or so. As I got closer, three things occured to me, one by one: 1. It was only one bird 2. It was significantly bigger than a crow 3. The damn thing wasn't gonna move. Too late, I leaned on the horn and the brakes. At the sound of the horn it hopped into the air and flapped its wings once in an attempt to escape, and John woke up just in time to hear a thump as the damn thing went flying over the back of the truck. That's the view in this picture. If I know you IRL I'll point out the bird to you. Or maybe I'll just highlight it or something at a later date. Anyway, as much as it sucks, John and I were cracking up about it for the rest of the trip.
	And this is what it did to my rental truck. You can't tell from this pic, but later entering California we discovered that it'd also knocked the right headlight severly out of alignment. A few good whacks took care of that, though. Cost me 200 bucks.
	John with the sunrise behind him.
	Welcome to freakin' Utah.
	Some nice-looking mountains in eastern Utah. Me: Goddamn, that's fucking beautiful. John: A lovely sentiment there, Mike.
	Some crazy balls in western Utah, 30-45 miles from Nevada. See those specks to the right of 'em? Those're people. We think.
	And here's Nevada. Lovely first impression, no?
	Cool, Beverly Hills! Oh wait, we're still in eastern freaking Nevada.
	And there's Beverly Hills itself! Isn't it glamourous?!
	I guess we were bored/delirious enough to find this somewhat amusing. It says Montezuma.
	John: Oh cool, a tunnel! ... Goddamn, that was a pussy tunnel!
	It's Tooele, you tool!
	This is the sign in Battle Mountain, Nevada. In case you can't see, that's a dove in the upper-right hand corner, with pink mountains and a rainbow. It really sounded scary on the map. This town's only scary in the sense that a drag-queen is, though.
	Some random scenic mountains in Nevada. I won't even attempt to remember where each one was, so just enjoy.
	That rightmost licenseplate says "KNCKLHED" or something. Take my word for it.
	I guess someone had some major gas?
	A Chevron/Casino. I swear to god there were slot machines by the bathroom. These people'll put a casino anywhere. Too bad the picture of the Denny's/Casino didn't come out.
	Needs no explanation. It's just funny. On either I-80 or the 101 in San Fran. Don't remember which.
	This is John at SFO on Wednesday, which pretty much officially ended the trip. It was fun!