Road Trip - Alan to The Allens

(Written from Madison, WI... yeah I know, already behind on the blog!!!!!!)

Before we start telling stories from our Chicago to Seattle (more correctly Anacortes, WA) adventures, we need to say a few words about the car trip up to Chicago.

When I looked at Google Maps months ago, I realized that it would not be too much out of the way to stop in East Lansing, MI. Who do we know in East Lansing you might ask?

Well, Alan, the second Guide Dog that we raised is a working Guide Dog in East Lansing. We have on occasion been in touch with his partner Diana. We figured we would not have the opportunity to stop by and say hi too often to Alan & Diana!!

For starters, we wanted to avoid the I-95 corridor. That meant taking the longer western route through West Virginia, Ohio and into Michigan.

Woz enjoying the view at the New River Visitor's Center, WV.

And… to get together with Diana on Saturday morning meant getting all the way to northern Ohio on Friday. And that was a looooooooong day! Some 616 miles in almost 12 hours! We were about as bat shit crazy in the car after all those hours as was Woz!

We made it to Toledo, Ohio on Friday and left us only a few hours to travel on Saturday morning.

Did I mention we are traveling with a lot of stuff...

There was a power outage in Diana's neighborhood on Friday night due to storms in her area. We never heard back from Diana as her cell phone had died. We were disheartened to find her at home on Saturday morning still with no power, no cell service and having only eaten jelly beans for dinner the night before.

Nothing makes your heart melt like seeing a guide dog you've raised in his home environment. This is the face we have missed. Alan hasn't changed at all!

Diana was happy to finally meet Woz as she follows him on his Facebook page! Woz was of course happy to meet Diana!!! Alan and Woz got a chance to get their ya-yas out running around playing before we left for lunch.

Seeing the dog you raised from a puppy working as a Guide Dog makes your heart sing!

Diana's love for Alan was evident. We know he is in a good place with someone that loves and cherishes him. That is the only important thing to us!

This might have been Woz's first time at a restaurant within close proximity to another dog. He was less than 5 feet away from Alan and did fantastic!!!

Even in the restaurant Diana would reach over to touch and stroke Alan. What a beautiful relationship! Probably the best part of our time together was Diana shared some personal stories with us, making us both cry. We shared stories of Alan as a puppy. We had time to bond.

We were concerned that Diana was home alone without power so we offered to take her on some errands. She need some things at the supermarket and we were thrilled to be able to help her. Probably some of the coolest things Diana shared with us is she taught Alan a few key commands to help her in her day-to-day life. For example, at the grocery store, she simply says "pharmacy" and Alan leads her to the pharmacy! Wow! She will say "service" and Alan takes her to customer service. At work, Diana says "button" and Alan takes her to the door with an automatic door activator.

When we got back, the pups had more play time together. What fun it was to see Alan playing with the toy we had brought him and Woz being his goofy self with a "Big Brother" he didn't even know he had!!

They play very hard and both pups were tuckered out. We knew Woz would sleep on the road.

Then it was time to say our goodbyes. Our four hours together seemed like four minutes. It just flew by. It was somewhat disconcerting to leave Diana at home with no power but we at least made sure her cell phone got charged up while we were at the restaurant. And fortunately the weather was quite cool outside so we knew she wasn't sweltering. And of course she had Alan by her side for good company.

What a great kick off to our trip! I knew everything would work out just great. P.S. The following day we received this text from Diana: "...Thanks so much for everything yesterday. I feel that you are not just Alan's parents. You are my friends..."

We had about 5 hours of travel to get to our friends the Allens in Grayslake, IL. About an hour northwest of Chicago.

I met K. Allen when I was doing my MS degree at Texas A&M in the early 80's. K. was my neighbor at one of the apartments I stayed at during my stay in College Station, TX. We were both Grad students (in different departments) and neither of us was from Texas, that that gave us an immeditae connection!!

We have stayed in touch over the years. Keith married a wonderful woman S. and now they have two grown daughters that are everything you could hope for in your children. They are simply great people! We know they would get us going on the right foot!