Hello friends and family of One in Four!
RV tour 4 has been on the road for almost two weeks, and everything has been going well. In the short time that the four of us - JT, James, Jor-El, and Dan - have been on the road, we've had enough adventures, met enough interesting people, and responded to so many new challenges that it feels like we've been on the road for months. Here's what's been happening for us so far:
The RV tour started with two great days of presenting - - one at Baldwin-Wallace and one at Ft. McCoy. B-W was a great place to start our journey because they have had the Tour a couple of times in the past, so they are familiar with who we are and what we need in order to present. The school is not too far outside of Cleveland, and Google Maps told us it was about 8.5 hours away from Williamsburg. It took us roughly 16 hours, thanks to some traffic, a wrong turn or two, and our adjustments to travelling in an RV rather than by car. We landed in a B-W parking lot at about 4 a.m., but were up and, thanks to our gracious contact there, had our tummies full of Burger King before noon. The presentation was to an audience of about 350 male freshman students. Although we all were a bit nervous going into it, all four of us stepped up and delivered a great presentation - James was even able to, with his usual grace and style, tactfully address the disarming comments that a few members of the audience threw at us. Our contacts at B-W were impressed with the presentation, and told us that we had met the standard that was set by RV tours in years past - which was definitely awesome feedback for us to get on Day 1!
We then hightailed it over to the Chicago area, where Dan lived with his parents this summer. We were all excited to find real beds and a shower before we left for the middle of Wisconsin. We found traveling across the Midwest to be much, much easier than our trek along the East coast had been. So we made it to a campground on the Fort McCoy military base in Wisconsin with plenty of time to get a good night's rest. We definitely needed it for the next day...
A bullhorn blasted across our campgrounds at 5:45AM. It was time for the soldiers stationed at Fort McCoy to start their day, and consequently, for us to start ours too. For the first time, we were presented with one of the challenges of living out of essentially a mobile house: we needed to shower before our presentation, and while the camping showers were located only a short walk away, a short look out the window told us that nature was deciding to have a small downpour itself. So we threw on our shower slippers, jackets, and ponchos, and trekked to the showers.
Once clean, we headed over to where we would present 6 times over the course of the day, to groups ranging between about 10 and 25 soldiers (about 7:30am to 7:30pm). It was intimidating for all of us to speak to these military audiences at first because they're so different than our usual college groups: as you can imagine, it tends to be slightly more comfortable to present to audiences who aren't comprised of soldiers that carry weaponry. Even though we set a new personal RV Tour record for most presentations ever given in one day (6), we all felt that our day at Fort McCoy was a tremendously positive experience. Our soldiers were overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic, and we could very clearly see the change we made there. If nothing else, Fort McCoy helped us prepare for our upcoming stop at West Point, in which we're presenting to an audience of 900 future military commanders.
After leaving Fort McCoy we returned to the Chicago area for a few nights off, which really helped us to ease our transition to life on the road. We met a Tour 1 member, Will Carter, for some Chicago-style deep dish at the original Pizzaria Uno in downtown Chicago, and James, JT, and Jor-El showed some real "skill" at a karaoke bar in Dan's hometown (Dan decided to save his singing chops for another time).
Warm, fed, showered, and stocked up with supplies thanks to a generous and charitable trip to Costco funded by a donation from Dan's parents, we left the Chicago area (with a quick stop at Portillo's, Dan's favorite restaurant ever) to head to Siena College in New York. We had no idea that we were about to encounter the biggest challenge of our tour so far.
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