The trip begins...

Wednesday, September 4th.
Interior.
An old brick house in rural Pfafftown, NC. The house is furnished with decorative antiques. In the kitchen a young man sits with a laptop computer, in a thoughtful pose.

Here we are, visiting Dan's aunt and uncle, Carol & Brent, in North Carolina. It is the evening before we hit the road and officially launch our Sofalogues road trip. It is time to recall where we are, why we are here and how we got here.

Carol and Brent's house in Pfafftown NC.

We arrived in Charlotte, NC, two weeks ago, on Wednesday the 21st of August, after a full day of flying from Billund, Denmark, through Amsterdam and via Philadelphia to Charlotte. Arriving in the evening, we were picked up by Carol & Brent and headed north towards Winston-Salem to their house.

While we stayed in Pfafftown everything we needed for the trip fell perfectly into place! Within the first few days Dan transferred is Illinois license to an NC ditto and we bought and registered our beautiful 1992 Ford Club Wagon!

The couch in front of the Goodwill store where we bought it.

After getting those important tasks out of the way we launched into a tour of junk furniture places in the Winston-Salem area, to hunt down just the right Sofalogues couch. We found it sitting outside a Goodwill store on the outskirts of the city; It's plush greenish golden-brown upholstery and Chesterfield'ish curvature just screamed and begged to be stuffed in the back of our van and taken across the country! So we bought it.

There was also other van-paraphenalia to buy: During the following days we shopped around for and bought a cooler, two pieces of foam that will compromise a bed for the person not sleeping on the couch -- and we started a road trip music collection, assembled with the help of local area used cd stores and the interesting cassette tape collections at different Goodwill stores.

When not shopping for things to outfit the van we worked to clean it out. Tommy, the nice guy we bought it from, had used it for his plumbing business, so the interior was not kept up to the standards of a passenger vehicle. And since we'll be living in the van for the next three months we thought we'd give it a work-over.

Golfing with Carol & Brent and their friends Bruce & Nita.

But our time with Carol & Brent was definitely not all "work" -- we packed in a good amount of play too! We've hiked in the Blue Ridge mountains, gone golfing with Carol & Brent's friends Bruce and Nita and tried our skills at frisbee golf and batting cages. And done the culinary tour of the Winston-Salem area. And whenever we had the chance we dragged Carol & Brent around to every thrift store we could find, to feed our crave for junk! :) If anyone is in need of old license plates, baseball mitts or ratty old work shirts, don't despair: We've got 'em! :)

Jens, Carol & Brent at a Mexican restaurant we went to.

We thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent in Pfafftown, and were pleasantly surprised at how well all our trip preparations went. There was only one glitch: A week ago we packed up all our stuff and got ready to hit the road and launch this trip for real. And the van wouldn't start! It had run perfectly until then, and we assumed that the battery must've been worn down or that it was out of gas (since the gas gauge isn't trustworthy). But alas, after spending all evening looking over the engine to the best of our abilities and even replacing the battery we had to give up and leave the van in the hands of a local mechanic.

We continually hoped and believed that we'd soon be getting it back, but the problem kept getting more complicated. Although we itched to get on the road we had another great week with Carol & Brent while waiting for our wheels. Exactly a week after the problem had arisen, and two weeks after we arrived in the US we got the van back and were ready to start our cross country journey!