DAY 1 -- Going (going), finally (finally) to Cali (Cali)!"

OMAHA, Neb. -- Well, the journey is finally underway. Shugar is going to California!

My dad and I took off at 9 a.m. (EST) this morning to begin the (almost) 2,400-mile trip West to Sacramento, Cali., where I plan on living the next few months as I work for MiLB.com. It was a long day -we didn't arrive in Omaha until 6:19 p.m. (CT)-- with a lot of miles logged. All in all, we knocked out 694 miles and four states. That may not seem like a lot to some of you heavy travelers, but it is still satisfying all the same.

And It will seem like an even bigger accomplishment tomorrow when we will drive a comparable distance just to put the state of Nebraska in our rear view mirror (which I wish we could see clearly out of...the Ford Escort was not made for packing up your life to move across the country).

A few other highlights of the day:

• The Pens won, 4-3, to knot their Eastern Conference Quarterfinal series with Ottawa, 1-1. Paul kept me up to date via text messages, and I was a nervous wreck for a while. I hope they win tomorrow because I will, again, have to miss the game due to travel. I just want the Pens to stick around long enough for me to see them play again!
• Staying in a hotel means FREE HBO, which in turn means that my dad and I could catch the first Sopranos of the new season. We should be able to catch tomorrow's episode as well, if we get to our next destination before 8 p.m. ... uhh ... MT? Yeesh, time zones are complicated.
• *We ate dinner at Valentinos, a ridiculous 'Italian' buffet, ranked "the best in Nebraska" by the...uhh, Buffet Federation of America...or something. The restaurant has 150 different items available during said buffet, so as you can imagine we ate plenty.

Below are a few 'stand-out' pics I took along the way today (I drove a lot today so I was unable to take as many as I would have liked. I will work on getting more pictures and more interesting pictures in the coming days):

That's the Mississippi River, I promise. It looked like...a river.

Instead of taking a plethora of pictures, I felt I could sum up our entire view (across four states) during the first day's drive in this shot. Here are my footnotes: In Ohio, add more trees. In Indiana, add the smell of manure and have it last for several miles at a time. In Illinois, plug Abraham Lincoln constantly (there were no Illini fighting either, the world of sports lies to me again). In Iowa, add rolling hills and multiply the size of the farms by (at least) 10 times. I expect more of this 'scenery' in Nebraska, by the way...

A greeting from today's final destination.