Cannonball Run

The mission: Drive friend Makayla's BMW 330xi from Chicago to Seattle.
Constraints: Can't leave before 12pm Monday morning (when the moving truck gets packed and goods signed for). Have to get to Seattle by 12pm for my 1230p doctor's appoint.

Can we do it??!! So far, so good! We departed an hour early yesterday from Chicago..about 11am. We promptly burned up that extra hour by sitting in TONS on construction traffic. My earlier Google searches for I-94 construction failed to yield complete results. Doh! So we began falling behind schedule...it looked like we had a lot of miles to make up and little time to do it! Finally in Minnesota we broke loose of the construction and made up some time on the way to Minneapolis. Unfortunately we hit Minneapolis right at rush-hour so were once again slowed. We stopped for coffee, Caribou Coffee of course!, I called into a meeting, and we got back on the road. From Minneaplolis to Fargo we averaged a solid 95mph (I love German engineering) and steadily made up ground. We gave some back by stopping for dinner in Fargo (not on my original plan), but decided to push for another 200 miles before bedtime. We left Fargo at about 10p, and rolled into the town of Bismark right around midnight. Sweet!

Accomplishments yesterday: 4 states (Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota). Hours of sustained speeds north of 100mph, 857 miles traveled, multiple cups of coffee, and no less than 12 Harley Davidson store sightings!

On the books for today: Wrap up ND, cross Montana, Idaho, and enter Washington. About 1,000 miles, test the speed limiter on the BMW, and find the Starbucks off of Exit 157!

Why did I title this post "Cannonball Run"? There was a great movie made back in the early 80's about an illegal cross-country road race with that title: link


Cheers from North Dakota...