Up to Speed

As of today, I am 21 days out from departure on my Midwest Scooter Training Tour (hitting the road Friday, July 9th). I thought I’d take a moment now to revisit some of the basics about this project, just to get everyone up to speed: this summer’s trip will act as a training session for my big tour of France, which is next summer. This training tour covers 3,400 miles: 7 States, 26 towns/cities in 50 days. I’m staying mostly in lower cost hotels, with a couple of B&Bs thrown in, but there are about 10 days camping (yikes!) well as a few more adventurous stays like in an overnight on a submarine and another on a Tall Ship.

Now let’s address the bigger question: what is this project all about? Well, I have a Hidden Disability (which you can learn all about in gruesome detail, if you wish, on the new website which I’ll describe in a moment) and I’m doing this project to share my story in hopes of raising awareness about Hidden Disabilities, something I and millions of other Americans deal with every day (see posting with H-P article). Around my depart date there will be a super cool web-site which will include real-time tracking that will allow all of you to follow along with me on my journey, as well as my updates and videoblogs and photos and the works.

In the meantime, you can keep up with me on my Facebook Group: Off The Map: Europe, Twitter: offthemap_eu or meet-up with me through FourSquare.com (ara@offthemap.eu).