We’ve packed up the Honda and we’re heading out this morning on a road trip of epic proportions: Just over 5,000 miles. Erika, Ernie (our miniature Schnauzer) and I are driving from Houston to Memphis today, overnighting there. On Sunday we’re continuing up to Muskegon, Michigan to spend some time with Dad and Caryl, my stepmom.

Next up on the itinerary: a slow drive across the country to Aliso Viejo, California to the Quest offices. I’ve got some meetings there in early August for the LiteSpeed v5 RTM party.

Finally, we’ll drive through Arizona and New Mexico to get back home to Houston.

Shortly after arriving back in Houston, I’ll fly back out to Michigan again, this time to speak at the West Michigan SQL User Group and Detroit SQL User Group.  (If only these meetings would have been two weeks prior, I might have been able to expense this whole thing!  Wouldn’t that be hilarious.)

This whole thing will take between two and a half to four weeks, depending on how we mix it up.  We have a couple of alternate plans in case we want to spend more time in a specific area.

Our only concern: we won’t be able to go to as many cool restaurants since we’ll have Ernie with us.  Ah, well – that’ll keep the road trip budget down, at least.  Speaking of budget, gas prices were enough of a concern to make us take the Honda instead of my beloved Jeep Wrangler.  33mpg versus 15, hmmm, lemme think about that – no.

You can track our progress on BrightKite or on Flickr, and I’ll blog periodically.  I’ll still be working (love ya, AT&T) so I’ll be doing work-related blog entries on here too as usual.