ROAD TRIP 2003
::| THE OVERVIEW |:: Well this summmer Torrey, Truong, and I decided to go on a road trip! *Applause* We had roughly 2 weeks to plan it out and get everything together. We knew what, where, and how. All the details were up to me *Bao* to arrange, as is this webpage. Don't worry, this isn't going to be a fancy webpage with cool graphics and flashing animations that will leave you amazed. The point is just to inform all our friends and foes alike of the trip and avoid the bombardment of questions that will rain on us from the overly curious group *rolls eyes* It will be simple as can be...because I forgot all about HTML codings! *shakes head* Alrighty, let's move on shall we? ::| THE PLAN |:: The purpose of the trip is to visit our PQ friends in Utah and our Ho in San Jose. Personally, I *Bao* just wanted to get the hell out of Seattle for a while. Of course, you all know that whenever you have plans, something always creeps up and changes things around *grrrr* We couldn't avoid it either. The original plan was: Leave Seattle Thursday night, arrive in Utah Friday morning, and stay until Sunday morning. Leave Utah Sunday morning, arrive in Irvine Sunday night, and stay until Monday afternoon. Leave Irvine Monday afternoon, arrive in San Jose Monday night, stay until Tuesday morning. Leave San Jose Tuesday morning, arrive back in Seattle Tuesday night. As you can see...that plan was a little bit complicated and required quite a bit of driving around, leaving not much time to do things. I had to be back before Wednesday morning because I have to work! After much thinking about it, I decided to change the plans last minute. Usually I wouldn't like to do something like that but desperate situations call for desperate measures. Plus there were only 3 of us and everybody agreed, right? *nods* Well we took out the Irvine part and just went straight to SJ after Utah. I am happy at the way that turned out. ::| THE MEANS |:: Ride: If we could have rented a car, we definitely would have done so. None of us is 25, however, so we settled for something a lot less reliable...Torrey's car. We're talking about a 1990 Honda Accord with 174K mi and numerous problems. We spent $25 prepping the car, haha. Oil change, and a rotation (switching the front tires with the rear tires, which are less worn out). We knew the car had previous problems with the radiator (the part that keeps the engine cool) but what the hell, it hasn't been acting up. On the day before the trip...the radiator acted up. Everything seemed fine again on the last day so we just went on with it. We made it, didn't we? *Applause* Drivers: We had two licensed drivers. Torrey and I switched turns driving the whole trip. It was quite hard since one person can only drive so much. Three drivers would have been a lot better but we did what we can and it was fine. Easy for Torrey to sleep in the car, or anywhere as a matter of fact. For me, I can never sleep in any moving vehicle unless I'm really very tired. Even then, I wouldn't get much. Funds: I alone had enough money for the whole trip but of course that would have been very unfair and generous of me. Since only Truong and I had money, we decided to just pay for it and have Torrey reimburse us back later (we kept receipts). Should have charged an interest. More specific about spendings later. ::| THE SPECS |:: Well here is the more detailed part of the trip so have fun! It's hard to be accurate so we tried our best. The table below explains the driving part of the trip: Seattle - Utah 865 miles 14 hours 20 minutes Average 60.4 mph Utah - San Jose 850 miles 14 hours Average 60.7 mph San Jose - Seattle 840 miles 12 hours Average 70.0 mph Total 2555 miles 40 hours 20 minutes Average 63.3 mph Now, this is how much we spent on the trip. The original plan was to spend at most $300 for everything. That means $100 each person (that does not include personal spendings). Not only did we meet the goal, we beat it by quite a bit *Applause*, it is one part about the trip I'm most proud of. Here are the spendings: Gas: Torrey's car was doing very well on the mileage side, better than we had expected so we saved quite a bit of money from there. The car was averaging 28.38 miles/gallon *oooooh*. The average price for gas that we paid was $1.78, not bad at all. We used up 90 gallons of gas *whoa* for a total cost of...$160.73 Misc. Expenses: Of course we needed food and water for the drive, among other things. Nothing spectacular, we spent $98.66 on...stuff. Total: Total cost for the trip is $259.39 and the average cost for each of us is $86.46 *wow* See how just a little careful spending can save you? ::| THE MEDIAS |:: During the trip we kept a little log of the things we did and saw. At first we wrote about every little thing, but then we got lazy and just wrote a summary of the day, hehe. Oh well, still makes for some stuff to read and it does its job of keeping the memories. You can read it HERE And of course, what would a road trip be without pictures! A picture is worth a thousand words. So lots of pictures equals...THIS ::| THE AFTERMATH |:: Just our afterthoughts on the trip: What I like about the trip was that it was fun and meeting the people from PQ and James again. PQ treats us very kindly and made me feel like it was at home. Even though they were busy they tried to spend some times with us. It was also fun hanging out with James. He took us to places and it was fun. I wasn't bored so it was a fun trip. There was a lot of thing's that would left me memories, such as Torrey was really tired from driving and start imagining twinkies, the bridge look like it was going up, we had the turn on the heat on high so the car won't over heat, and memories with the PQ people and with James too. This trip didn't have any flaws about it because the car was running great (well some times), we didn't spend much money and it was fun meeting with the PQ people again. Truong. ::| THE FAQS |:: Here are some frequently asked questions 1.Where did you guys go?? We did try to keep this trip a secret, but that's kinda hard. We went to Utah and San Jose. 2.What, are you for real? YES, we are for real. 3.Was it fun? Oh hell yeah, why do you think we kept it a secret, because it's easier to have fun in a small group where everyone gets along with each other. 4.Why didn't you guys tell me!? Well probably because we didn't want you to come along because you would have screwed up everything. 5.What did you guys do? Should I really answer this...just read the page and the log. 6.Who is that cute guy in the pictures? Bao 7.Who is that cool guy in the pictures? Torrey 8.Who is that buff guy in the pictures? Truong ______________________________________ ::Made using IE 6.0 and at 1280x1024 resolution:: ::Copyright 20003 Bao, Torrey, and Truong::
::| THE OVERVIEW |::
Well this summmer Torrey, Truong, and I decided to go on a road trip! *Applause* We had roughly 2 weeks to plan it out and get everything together. We knew what, where, and how. All the details were up to me *Bao* to arrange, as is this webpage. Don't worry, this isn't going to be a fancy webpage with cool graphics and flashing animations that will leave you amazed. The point is just to inform all our friends and foes alike of the trip and avoid the bombardment of questions that will rain on us from the overly curious group *rolls eyes* It will be simple as can be...because I forgot all about HTML codings! *shakes head* Alrighty, let's move on shall we?
::| THE PLAN |::
The purpose of the trip is to visit our PQ friends in Utah and our Ho in San Jose. Personally, I *Bao* just wanted to get the hell out of Seattle for a while. Of course, you all know that whenever you have plans, something always creeps up and changes things around *grrrr* We couldn't avoid it either. The original plan was: Leave Seattle Thursday night, arrive in Utah Friday morning, and stay until Sunday morning. Leave Utah Sunday morning, arrive in Irvine Sunday night, and stay until Monday afternoon. Leave Irvine Monday afternoon, arrive in San Jose Monday night, stay until Tuesday morning. Leave San Jose Tuesday morning, arrive back in Seattle Tuesday night. As you can see...that plan was a little bit complicated and required quite a bit of driving around, leaving not much time to do things. I had to be back before Wednesday morning because I have to work! After much thinking about it, I decided to change the plans last minute. Usually I wouldn't like to do something like that but desperate situations call for desperate measures. Plus there were only 3 of us and everybody agreed, right? *nods* Well we took out the Irvine part and just went straight to SJ after Utah. I am happy at the way that turned out.
Leave Seattle Thursday night, arrive in Utah Friday morning, and stay until Sunday morning. Leave Utah Sunday morning, arrive in Irvine Sunday night, and stay until Monday afternoon. Leave Irvine Monday afternoon, arrive in San Jose Monday night, stay until Tuesday morning. Leave San Jose Tuesday morning, arrive back in Seattle Tuesday night.
As you can see...that plan was a little bit complicated and required quite a bit of driving around, leaving not much time to do things. I had to be back before Wednesday morning because I have to work! After much thinking about it, I decided to change the plans last minute. Usually I wouldn't like to do something like that but desperate situations call for desperate measures. Plus there were only 3 of us and everybody agreed, right? *nods* Well we took out the Irvine part and just went straight to SJ after Utah. I am happy at the way that turned out.
::| THE MEANS |::
Ride: If we could have rented a car, we definitely would have done so. None of us is 25, however, so we settled for something a lot less reliable...Torrey's car. We're talking about a 1990 Honda Accord with 174K mi and numerous problems. We spent $25 prepping the car, haha. Oil change, and a rotation (switching the front tires with the rear tires, which are less worn out). We knew the car had previous problems with the radiator (the part that keeps the engine cool) but what the hell, it hasn't been acting up. On the day before the trip...the radiator acted up. Everything seemed fine again on the last day so we just went on with it. We made it, didn't we? *Applause* Drivers: We had two licensed drivers. Torrey and I switched turns driving the whole trip. It was quite hard since one person can only drive so much. Three drivers would have been a lot better but we did what we can and it was fine. Easy for Torrey to sleep in the car, or anywhere as a matter of fact. For me, I can never sleep in any moving vehicle unless I'm really very tired. Even then, I wouldn't get much. Funds: I alone had enough money for the whole trip but of course that would have been very unfair and generous of me. Since only Truong and I had money, we decided to just pay for it and have Torrey reimburse us back later (we kept receipts). Should have charged an interest. More specific about spendings later.
Drivers: We had two licensed drivers. Torrey and I switched turns driving the whole trip. It was quite hard since one person can only drive so much. Three drivers would have been a lot better but we did what we can and it was fine. Easy for Torrey to sleep in the car, or anywhere as a matter of fact. For me, I can never sleep in any moving vehicle unless I'm really very tired. Even then, I wouldn't get much.
Funds: I alone had enough money for the whole trip but of course that would have been very unfair and generous of me. Since only Truong and I had money, we decided to just pay for it and have Torrey reimburse us back later (we kept receipts). Should have charged an interest. More specific about spendings later.
::| THE SPECS |::
Well here is the more detailed part of the trip so have fun! It's hard to be accurate so we tried our best. The table below explains the driving part of the trip:
Now, this is how much we spent on the trip. The original plan was to spend at most $300 for everything. That means $100 each person (that does not include personal spendings). Not only did we meet the goal, we beat it by quite a bit *Applause*, it is one part about the trip I'm most proud of. Here are the spendings:
Gas: Torrey's car was doing very well on the mileage side, better than we had expected so we saved quite a bit of money from there. The car was averaging 28.38 miles/gallon *oooooh*. The average price for gas that we paid was $1.78, not bad at all. We used up 90 gallons of gas *whoa* for a total cost of...$160.73
Misc. Expenses: Of course we needed food and water for the drive, among other things. Nothing spectacular, we spent $98.66 on...stuff.
Total: Total cost for the trip is $259.39 and the average cost for each of us is $86.46 *wow* See how just a little careful spending can save you?
::| THE MEDIAS |::
During the trip we kept a little log of the things we did and saw. At first we wrote about every little thing, but then we got lazy and just wrote a summary of the day, hehe. Oh well, still makes for some stuff to read and it does its job of keeping the memories. You can read it HERE
And of course, what would a road trip be without pictures! A picture is worth a thousand words. So lots of pictures equals...THIS
::| THE AFTERMATH |:: Just our afterthoughts on the trip:
What I like about the trip was that it was fun and meeting the people from PQ and James again. PQ treats us very kindly and made me feel like it was at home. Even though they were busy they tried to spend some times with us. It was also fun hanging out with James. He took us to places and it was fun. I wasn't bored so it was a fun trip. There was a lot of thing's that would left me memories, such as Torrey was really tired from driving and start imagining twinkies, the bridge look like it was going up, we had the turn on the heat on high so the car won't over heat, and memories with the PQ people and with James too. This trip didn't have any flaws about it because the car was running great (well some times), we didn't spend much money and it was fun meeting with the PQ people again. Truong.
::| THE FAQS |:: Here are some frequently asked questions
1.Where did you guys go?? We did try to keep this trip a secret, but that's kinda hard. We went to Utah and San Jose.
2.What, are you for real? YES, we are for real.
3.Was it fun? Oh hell yeah, why do you think we kept it a secret, because it's easier to have fun in a small group where everyone gets along with each other.
4.Why didn't you guys tell me!? Well probably because we didn't want you to come along because you would have screwed up everything.
5.What did you guys do? Should I really answer this...just read the page and the log.
6.Who is that cute guy in the pictures? Bao
7.Who is that cool guy in the pictures? Torrey
8.Who is that buff guy in the pictures? Truong