Humble Beginnings

Keith’s doing great.  

…or something.

Also, hello.  And welcome to the blog.  Jon, Keith, Asan and I are very happy to see you.  Well, Keith is perishing and Jon and Asan are still living the high life in LA.  But I'm very happy to see you.

Mainly because I'm having booze for the first time in 30 days.  Oh wine, how I've missed you.

I am currently on a layover in Philly, having suffered through my own pile of shenanigans just trying to get this far into my journey.  This morning, I had an Über driver (who we shall also call “Dave”) who was, to say it gently, a complete fucking idiot.  He had literally no idea how to get to the airport.  He pulled out a Garmin GPS system from the 1940's and asked me for the address for LAX.

“It’s LAX,” I said.  “The Airport.”  

He replied, “Do you want to tell me how to get there?”

…

Agitation ensued.

I had to whip out my Waze app because, well, I don’t know how to get to the airport without her.  BUT it’s not my job to know these things!  So, cram it.

The entire ride consisted of the Waze woman yelling directions from my phone,  followed by the driver asking, “WHAT?  PARDON ME?  WHAT DID SHE SAY?”  And then me having to repeat the instructions.  Loudly.   

Not a fan of the Uber, as it turns out.

Upon getting on my flight, I was seated near a transient who was clearly having some intestinal difficulties which wafted directly into my nostrils.  You people shit like animals....sometimes in your own pants. 

I’ve never been so relieved for a layover in my life.

BUT that’s only the latest in the struggle to get this road trip off the ground!  (Cue segue...) It's been a while since some combo of Keith, Jon, Asan and I went on a bloggy vacation adventure, mainly because it took us like three years to come up with a name for this blog. As always, this seems to be the most difficult portion of the trip. (Although my Über driver was vying pretty hard for the title this morning…)

Anyway, we obviously settled on the blog you see before you: Scandalnavia.  But the process was bad. Like brütally bad.  

Jon, Keith, Asan and I had a few brainstorming sessions that qucikly turned into shitstorming sessions, which resulted in a flood of terrible titles. 

Titles like:

Seriously.  

Personally, I liked the simple and elegant ...

But I was outvoted.

We even discussed a tribute to our last road trip blog, the Stabbey Road Trip, with this:

Because Abba was discovered during Eurovision in 1903.  Then somehow, we landed on Scandalnavia.  Which presented a whole lot of crazy on its own:

We abandoned this idea briefly for Keith's brainchild:

...which I secretly still love.   

But Keith and I got outvoted.  Although there are only two other people involved, so I'm not sure how that happened.

And so, Scandalnavia was born.  And reborn. 

So, although it's been a crazy journey--and it's only day zero... we will survive.  Maybe.  Because we're tough.

Real tough.