City by City, Date by Date: The Plan

The following is a skeleton of the entire trip plan broken down into roughly 500-mile increments. These increments may be called legs, jaunts, crawls, dashes, shoots, ladders, hops, shimmies, or anything that captures or fails to capture the essence of moving from one place to another.

The Proper Name of each section will be given by the individual who plans it. We would much rather award names that represent the full complexity of that portion of the trip than to adopt a superficial nomenclature based only on things visible on a national map. So over the next few weeks, as we plan the whole trip, all the increments will receive heart-felt and deserved names.

The Major Tom Jaunt: Michigan to San Diego: May 7th to  May 11th.
  The Major Tom Jaunt is named for its nature: it is the departure from this familiar place to one that lacks the same gravity. It begins with two of those glorious, robed bildungsroman ceremonies: graduations. I will be graduating from SVSU on May 7th with a Bachelors' in Sociology and Spanish with a Political Science minor, with the plan of heading to the University of Michigan Law School in August (unless I get accepted someplace with a better offer, which hasn't happened yet). That Friday, the family will be grilling out in Clairemont Village, bonding over Stuball's success. Then Stuie drives to Holland.
Robbie will be graduating from Hope College on May 8th with his Bachelors' in Business and English Literature. I imagine that there will be a shin-dig in the Grand Rapids area to afford the Guimond family the opportunity to toast Robbie's four years of success at Hope.
Whether we fly out of Grand Rapids after a stint with Robbie's family or fly out of Detroit after a night of R&R at Grandpa Patty's in Jackson, MI (the birthplace of the Republican Party), we will have assembled our bags and important documents by the night of May 10th so that we can watch what may be the last movie we watch for a few months and eat what will likely be the largest meal we eat for a few months. On May 11th, we will take our protein pills and put our helmets on, board a plane to San Diego, and drink some free soda on the plane.

Leg 1: The Mayim Bialik Leg.San Diego to LA (May 16-18) 137 Miles
Leg 2: Los Angeles to San Francisco (May 18-26) 480 Miles
Leg 3: San Fran to Crescent City (May 27-June 1) 379 Miles
Leg 4: Crescent City-Portland (June 1-7) 377 Miles
          Stay in Portland for 2 nights, because we hear it is the Mecca of Cycling
Stretch 5: Portland to Yellowstone (June 9-15)  500 Miles
Stretch 6: Yellowstone to Casper (June 16-23) 675 Miles
Stretch 7: Casper to Sioux Falls(June 24-28) 580 Miles
Stretch8: Sioux Falls to Manitwoc (June 29-July 5) 540 Miles
Stretch 8.5: Manitwoc to Ludington (July 5-Later on the 5)
           Ride the Badger Across Lake Michigan
Leg 9: Ludington to Bliss (July 6-8) 200 Miles

That's the bones of the trip. Do it up.