Trip of a Lifetime??? With some biblical inspiration...

Five months of planning could not have prepared us for what would come...

Greetings! Sorry for the delay since my last post... I was out of town on a trip that I will soon explain.

Four men, on a sports trip... grunt grunt grunt...

Our plan: Four baseball parks, amusement park, and two historical sites all in one week's time.

Saturday, July 28th, roughly Nine AM, we depart. We are headed for our first game at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Go Cards! Drive down was pretty uneventful... except we imposed a rule that any time there was a gaseous exodus, the window needed to be rolled down... for everyone's safety (Gross you say? hey, we are men!)

The real events of the day happened after the trip (Cards won by the way, 5-2 I think...).

It was my turn to drive, sadly enough because I has all of 3 hours of sleep the night before... and it was 9:30 pm and I had about three hours of driving ahead of me. Our next game was in Cincinnati the next day... a day game. We had roughly 15 hours to drive 5 and a half hours. But o wait, time zone change... so take an hour off of our time. Our goal was to drive three hours that night, check into a hotel, and then drive two more in the morning. That was the plan. So back to the car. We got in the car at 9:30, we were a mile away from the interstate... no sweat... well I guess 40,000 other people must have been trying to get on the same interstate on ramp, because it took over an hour to make it a mile (ave. speed: less than a mile an hour for you math whizzes out there!) So, now we are cruising. Heading through Illinois, now Indiana. We wanted to crash around Indianapolis, because it was roughly half way. 1:30 rolls around, with two guys snoring in the back seat, I figure it is time to find a hotel. We are close to Indianapolis so we made it halfway. We stop at an exit that has four or five hotels. Figure we'd find a room... yeah, sure didn't. Four hotels checked, zero rooms. We head back on the interstate... next exit, three more hotels... seven hotels total, zero rooms... Then Eric, one of the guys on the trip, realizes... hey, isn't the brickyard 400 this weekend? I am not a big NASCAR fan, but I know there are two really big races a year. Indianapolis 500 and the Brickyard. Both by chance are in Indianapolis... and where are we... yup, Indianapolis...

We ended up checking about 12 hotels... zero rooms. We decide to drive all the way to Cinci. As we approach Cinci we begin checking hotels again... we are miles away from the race... so we figure we'd be safe. Nope... no rooms. On a hunch, I ask, is it because of the race? "Yeah," was the response "and the Jazz Festival". Oh, so not only do we have one of the biggest NASCAR races against us, but there's a jazz festival... great... So we slept, in a car, in a Home Depot/Walmart parking lot. We arrived at about 6 as the sun was rising... I didn't sleep at all. I quickly had to get out of the car, because I cannot sit still to save my life... And I think the best thing for me to do is get some coffee and to collect all the shopping carts that are all over the lot... well, I woke up two of the other guys who were actually able to sleep for 20 minutes... whoops!

We brushed our teeth in the parking lot, with bottled flavored water as our rinse (which was disgusting...), and went to a Burger King for breakfast. We stayed there about two hours, killing time until we could go to the game. Two of the guys tried to sleep, I brought in a book and my laptop, JR tried to read also. We go to the game... gross, smelly, wearing the same clothes as the day before... and great, it was 95 degrees in Cinci. Cubs win, 6-1. I wish I could say that the rest of the trip was as exciting... but nothing tops the first 30 hours of the trip.

Monday we went to Ceder Point, a huge roller coaster park. Great rides, horrible lines... even on a Monday. Cleveland hosted the Texas Rangers. Cleveland won... don't remember the score though. Our hotel was only two blocks away from the field. Downtown Cleveland was awesome. Great restaurants, great scenery. Off to Pittsburgh. Nicest stadium. Great backdrop of downtown. Pirates won 15-1, over the Cards. Our hotel room, though, we ran into another problem. See, we booked all the hotels ahead of time (except for the first, obviously, and the last, because we didn't know where we would be on the road). We booked a hotel with two double beds, but they only had king sized rooms. Four guys do not fit well on a king sized bed, so I volunteered to sleep on a recliner... that was uncomfortable, so I ended up on the floor.
The next morning we start our journey home... with two stops on the way, Canton, OH, home of the NFL Hall of Fame, and Dyersville, IA, home of the Field of Dreams. Pittsburgh to Canton was a beautiful country drive through the Appalachian mountains. Unfortunately there was only a country highway, and that one seemed to drop to 25 mph every ten miles when we entered another town...
We arrived in East Canton (yeah, there is actually and East Canton) and that led us to Canton. No sweat right? Follow the signs, we will be there in no time. Well, there were no signs... We had no idea what highway to take, what exit... nothing. Finally, we figure it out and we arrive... just in time to see hundreds of kids, from a YMCA camp. The Hall of Fame isn't very big, so when we see 500 kids walk in, we knew it would be a long day.
The rest of the way was pretty easy. Found hotel, found the Field of Dreams, and despite my attempt to go the wrong way, and to get into an accident, we made it home safely on Friday afternoon. Praise God!
Our story was pretty hilarious... lots of fun memories. Maybe not for you, but for us. And we learned something from it. You see, we were going on our plans that things will just work out for the best of us. We relied on our own thoughts and desires instead of maybe finding a better way (better maps. better planning of the first night) and we ended up in some pretty uncomfortable situations.
It reminds me of many biblical figures. Jonah, Judas, the Israelites countless times, all had a higher calling to live with. They all had great plans set before them. Unfortunately, they wanted no part in God's plans. They wanted to live life their way. Well, one ended up in a whale, another hanged himself (yeah, its hanged, not hung) and the others found themselves in captivity several times. Our plans don't seem to work all that well. But the great news is that God had better plans. In the book of Jeremiah God declares His plans for us:
Jeremiah 29: 11-14: "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile." (NIV)
If you seek him with all your heart, he will be found by you, and he will deliver you from your captivity. Think about it. How is your captivity? Maybe some higher plans are a better choice.