3/13 – Going to Milwaukee

This is the start of my trip across the US for this company called MS Run the US. They run an ultra relay from LA-NYC and I’ll be on the two person road crew as the media person for about half of the trip from LA-Nebraska. MS Run the US is a company that puts on this event and other events related to running throughout the year to raise money for people with MS and also researchers for MS. It will be a pretty crazy and awesome experience and I will try to be posting on here as I can. Each post will vary in how many days it covers, but this first one covers my travel day to go train in Milwaukee.

Woke up this morning and finished the last packing stuff, Mom made me 3 eggs and some toast before driving me to the Portland airport for my flight to LaGuardia. I had a quick interview with Liz from Saco Bay News about my trip which was pretty cool. There was one slight complication with my carry on because the plane didn’t have enough room for everyone’s bags, so I had to check my camera bag but it didn’t cost anything extra. The rest of the trip went well, although there was a lot of turbulence as we went over Lake Michigan when landing in Milwaukee.

I got my bags and went out to meet Ashley, the founder of MS Run the US, who was picking up me and my co-worker Gabby. Gabby will be the nutritionist and endurance coach to keep the runners going as we go. Gabby was already in the car with her and meeting the two of them in person kind of felt like the first real step in this trip. We drove to a restaurant where we met Lanaya, Haley, and Christian. Lanaya is also part of the road crew but she will be starting in May when she switches out with Gabby. She happens to live in Minneapolis so she joined us for dinner. Haley and Christian are part of the MS Run the US company. We had a good time at dinner, they are all runners and so it was interesting to hear them talk about their experiences, and I also got to talk about my experiences and what I’m excited for on the trip. I said I was excited to spend time outside and to be able to talk to the runners and be able to hear their story and capture it with my videos. 

After dinner Gabby, Lanaya, and I were talking just the 3 of us and we were all kinda realizing that this thing that all 3 of us randomly applied on Indeed for was actually happening. It was a weird feeling that we just met these people for the first time and in a few days we were going to be taking their vehicle across the country. It was cool to have that quick conversation with them because it made me realize how all 3 of us were very excited but also feeling how unusual this job and adventure really is.

Ashley took me and Gabby to our hotel which was across the parking lot and she gave us the car after we checked in. When we got in the car to go park Gabby said something like “So the adventure begins” and we went to each of our hotel rooms.