After a long week of traveling and waiting, I finally made it to Stanford earlier this morning and moved into my place in the Schwab Residentialm Center. it was a great feeling to see the pal trees around and realize that i'm really going to be a student here. Today was spent moving my stuff into my room, unpacking, setting up my room, and running other assorted errands (like getting a student ID, buying my parking pass, and purchasing other items needed for my room). I ended the evening by going to dinner with three of my classmates, my boys Detavio and Rashad and my girl DeShay. We had a ball wildin' out at a Thai restaurant and came back to me and Tavio's suite to crack open a bottle of champagne to commemorate our arrival at Stanford. I can tell that I'm going to have a great couple of years here.
Today was officially my day of studying and rest. The day started off bright and early with me hitting the "Essentials of Accounting" book that Stanford recommended incredibly hard. The GSB told us all to start studying at the start of the summer, but I was crazy busy with other stuff all summer, so now I'm just getting started...two days before the start of Math Camp. Procrastinating is one of the things that I do incredibly well, but I need to get a lot worse at it over the course of the next two years.
My girl Kendra gave me the major hookup on a nice rate at a Cortyard Marriott last night, but I had to check out of there today at noon. Fortunately, she was able to hook me up with another good rate at a full-service Marriott about 18 miles away from the first spot and this place is PHAT!!! I'd never stayed at a full Marriott before, so i was surprised at how nice the place was when I hit the lobby. The shock escalated when I came into the room...VA has come up once again. This place is big enough to be a $2000/month studio apartment in NYC. This room is the perfect place to get some bigtime studying in and I've been crankikng through the accounting for the past few hours. My brain hurts, but this is a really easy to read book and I'd recommend it to anyone trying to get a crash course in accounting concepts.
Doing all of this studying today and realizing that I'll be heading to Stanford to move into my place tomorrow is making it all "real" and "final" for me now. I can't believe I actually packed up all of my stuff, left all my family behind 3000 miles away, and moved all the way to California...and now I'm about to start business school at what i consider to be the best B-school in the world. I'm about to make a move that will secure the future of my kids and my kids' kids (if I ever get married and have any, that is). It's pretty overwhelming to think about it and I'm in a state of shock. From little ol' King George, VA to the Stanford Graduate School of Business...VA DONE COME UP!!! Whew, I just want to hit Stanford and make my family and friends proud.
Some people reading this might think I'm going overboard with this paragraph, but I'm just being real. I'm excited by what's ahead, but I'm truly terrified. I hope all of you enjoy coming along for the ride with me over the next couple of years...
I just got to the hotel in Sacramento and they have high speed internet access, so I’m finally able to post all of the entries I’d written throughout the trip. For most of my drive, I’d planned on making another funny entry about my drive out here, but now I’m sitting here with a heavy heart, so I've got to get a little serious...
An hour after crossing the state line into California, I got a phone call from one of my friends back home saying that one of our peoples was in a dangerous life situation and that she was trying to figure out a way to provide help. This totally caught me by surprise and it also made me feel incredibly guilty because I would go over to the friend’s house and help if I were back home, but I was left powerless to do anything but try to get information from the friend that called me. I was incredibly distraught after that call ended and I was in a sort of trance while I was driving toward Sacramento. Before I knew it, all of the mountains and trees that I-80 started with in Cali turned into Sacramento highways…then I looked in my rear view mirror and saw a motorcycle cop flashing his lights at me. Apparently, he’d been following me for a couple of miles and saw me speeding down the highway. My mind was so out of it that I didn’t notice him flagging me down until the last minute and I didn’t even realize I was speeding until I slowed down to pull onto the shoulder. I didn’t try to argue the ticket because I knew I was guilty, but it sucked for me to have come all the way across the country without incident and then to get a speeding ticket 10 minutes from my hotel. Oh well, my mother said that I should be happy that I’d only gotten that one ticket over the course of all this driving that I’ve done. As I sit here typing this entry 30 minutes after the incident, I am still more shaken with the thought of not being able to help my friend than I am with any increase in car insurance or speeding ticket fine that I will incur.
I’m tired with a capital ‘T’ after all this driving, so I’m going to take a nap and then jump back into the studying.
After a day of driving that started at 8:20AM and lasted 9 hours (Mapquest estimated 10 hours), I arrived in Elko, NV this afternoon…and checked into yet another hotel with no internet access. From all of the signs that I’d seen on the highway, I thought Elko would have been a pretty big city, but this joint is SMALL. If you take away the 5-6 casinos in the middle of town, this placed would barely exist. At least, the young lady who checked me into the hotel was nice and I even won $25 playing blackjack at one of the casinos earlier tonight. I’ll likely turn in soon so I can get an early start in the morning and hit the road by 8-9AM.
Today’s drive was the longest I’ve done so far, but I enjoyed it the most because of the scenery that appeared before me. After leaving the hotel this morning, I spent 5 hours getting through the rest of Wyoming, then I went across the top portion of Utah, and drove about 220 miles into Nevada on my way here. I was relegated to my CDs for most of the trip because there were almost no radio stations on my path except for in the Salt Lake City area. Unlike my torturous drive through the Cornhusker state yesterday, I loved driving through Wyoming…that place has nothing in the way of anything, but it is one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen. When I was on I-80 West going through the state, I was literally driving between and through the mountains (one part of I-80 was at an elevation of 8800+ feet) and, at times, the rocks were so close that I could have parked my car and walked out 25 feet to start rock climbing. It was simply amazing and I got a lot of good pictures there. Utah and the first portion of Nevada were also surprisingly pretty with their own mountainous sceneries and I got plenty of pictures in those two states too. I had another day where I did not see a single police officer on the road, which surprised me…where are the traffic officers in these states? They could be getting some hectic revenue from speeding tickets if they had some people on duty to catch them. Shoot, they could have caught me going 96mph and given me a ticket of legendary proportions…it’s a good thing they didn’t though because y’all know your boy is broker than Oliver Twist nowadays. : - )
It’s time for me to end this entry. I’m sorry this one is so short, but I’ve got to try to put an hour or two of studying in to finish up the Quantitative Skills CD-ROM in the MBA.com MBA Survival Kit. I didn’t realize how good this set of CDs was, but this thing is on point so far. I’ve learned things from this quant skills CD that I hadn’t done in so long that it took me a while to remember that I’d ever seen the material before. Too bad I didn’t start using them earlier. The quant disc is the first of the four CDs in the set and I want to get through this one, the Accounting one, and the Statistics one by the start of math camp on Thursday. Maybe I should start doing these CDs while I’m driving…it’s not like there are cops out there on the road to catch me multitasking…hahahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha!
I just got into town and I’ve got yet another hotel room without internet access. Fortunately, there was a Kinko’s down the street so I was able to check my email for 20 cents per minute…that was some of the fastest emailing that I’ve ever done : - )
Today was a monster of a day on the road and, to paraphrase Jay-Z, I was focused, man. Mapquest told me that I was looking at a 9 hour and 21 minute drive, so I decided last night that I was going to do everything I could to beat that estimate. As such, I was going to just go straight through from Des Moines to Cheyenne with no stops except to get gas, use the restroom, and a single stop to get a post card for one of my sisters in Nebraska (she’d asked me to get one in every state I hit, but I didn’t remember until I hit Iowa). I’m glad that the hotel offered a free continental breakfast because that let me fill up early and I’d even grabbed an extra bagel, which became my lunch on the road. After leaving Des Moines, I had to go through about 100 miles more of Iowa before hitting Nebraska and that’s where it got hard.
I’m seriously beefin’ with Nebraska right now because that state is wack to drive through. Let me start with the good though…Omaha was pretty decent to drive through and had two of the best urban stations that I’ve heard since starting this trip. Other than that, driving through Nebraska was mental torture. Soon after leaving Omaha, I hit Lincoln, NE, which is the home of the University of Nebraska, and I can now understand why that school’s mascot is The Cornhusker…there is nothing but a bunch of cornfields there. In fact, there was one cornfield that stretched for a whole mile and I’m not exaggerating…it went on for a solid mile. For the 5-6 hours that I was in Nebraska after leaving Omaha, there were no urban radio stations and 2 or 3 top-40 stations, so it was all about listening to my CDs. Here are some of the highlights of today on the road:
1. In Omaha, I was driving at ~86 mph in a 75mph zone and I looked down at my cellie to make a call. When I looked back up, I saw a Nebraska State Trooper in my rearview mirror with his lights flashing. My immediate thought was “Dang, I’ve got to add the cost of a ticket to the overall cost of this trip” and I started pulling onto the left shoulder to get my ticket. Then, to my surprise, the cop went around me and kept on flying up the road. He must have been responding to an emergency and I dodged a bullet.
2. Because Route 80 West is basically straight and wide-open road through Nebraska, it invites fast driving and the fact that there were no other cops on the entire route through the state allowed me to floor it. I actually broke 90 mph for the first time in my life today and took a picture of the speedometer with my digital camera to mark the moment (yeah, I was REALLY bored on the road).
3. While I was driving, I had to keep myself entertained to stay awake and that included singing along with the music I had blasting on my stereo from my CDs. At one point, I took it back to the ol’ school and had The Rude Boys’ “Written all over your face” playing. Y’all remember the part toward the middle of the song where Gerald Levert breaks it down, right? Well, I was behind the wheel breaking it down singing along...I’m talkin’ body rocking, head nodding side to side, and singing to the top of my lungs. Then, I looked over to my right and saw a couple of kids staring at me from the backseat of their car like I was crazy. Normally I would have been embarrassed, but that just gave me more motivation to keep performing for them…I hope they liked the show.
4. About 4 hours into Nebraska, I started driving with my wifebeater on so I could get more comfortable and, soon after, Lil Jon’s “Get Low” came on the stereo. THAT IS MY JOINT, so I started getting good and crunk in my car. I was screaming “To ‘da windows….to ‘da walls” at the top of my lungs, dancing back and forth in the driver’s seat, throwin’ bows, and even droppin’ it like it’s hot (as much as I could while driving). About halfway through the song, I looked out one of my side windows and I saw an older white lady looking at me in horror like she’d never seen any one dance to Lil Jon before (given that it was the middle of Nebraska, she probably hadn’t). So, I did what any young man in my position would do…I gave her the Lil’ Scrappy mad dog screwface and sped off…O-KAY-KAY-KAY!!! : - )
Aight, y’all. The pizza delivery man just got here so I’ve got to go pay for my dinner. I’ll write more tomorrow night from Elko, NV.
Unfortunately, my hotel room here doesn’t have high-speed internet access, so I’m typing this entry in Word and will upload it when I can access the internet from my laptop. Something tells me that I won’t be seeing an internet connection until I get to Sacramento because, if this $89/night “business” hotel room at a pretty decent hotel in Des Moines doesn’t have one, then I KNOW that the places I have reservations for in Cheyenne, WY and Elko, NV won’t have one.
Anyways, it seemed to be a long drive to get here from Toledo, but I’ve got to start getting used to it because today was only a little over 8 hours…according to Mapquest, I’m looking at 9 hours and 21 minutes tomorrow and 10 hours on Sunday. After leaving Toledo, I got through the rest of Ohio, completely passed through Indiana and Illinois, and went through about 3-4 hours worth of Iowa before arriving here. I’ve decided that the staples of music in the Midwest must be country and classic rock music because I can find those stations everywhere. Too bad that’s not the same for urban and even pop music stations. Thank goodness for the Chicago and Des Moines areas because they had some great things to listen to…aside from those, it was all about listening to my CDs.
I’m exhausted, but, before I go, I’ve got to give my interesting story of the day. So, I arrived at the hotel about an hour ago and, after all this driving through Iowa, I hadn’t seen one other Black person at any of the places I stopped to rest or get gas. A few minutes ago, I was returning with some dinner from Wendy’s and I saw two Black guys in front of my hotel. I couldn’t help but be happy to see a little diversity around there so it put a smile on my face…that is, until I got out of my car and one of the guys made a B-line for me and tried like hell to get me to buy a bootleg Rolex watch from him. I was on my cell phone with a friend of mine, so I could only wave the guy off, but I was just left shaking my head and wondering why one of the two Black folks I’d seen in the entire state of Iowa had to be about the bootleg game. It was pretty funny overall, in a sad sort of way…
Whew! I sure am tired. It's a little after 9pm EST and I finally made it to my hotel room in Toledo. And, best of all, there is a wireless network set up here so can submit this blog entry. The drive here seemed to take forever. It took me a little over 8 hours to get here, but that's because I took a 30-45 minute nap soon after I crossed into Ohio because I caught myself falling asleep behind the wheel. Tonight will be the first time I haven't had to worry about doing any packing in a week and a half, so I will finally be able to get a full night's sleep. My original plan was to study each night of this trip, but tonight is going to be a lost cause. I guess I'll just have to catch up on sleep in order to be awake enough to study on the other nights.
Before I sign off to catch some Z's, I've got to note that I've only seen a handful of people of color since leaving VA. I stopped at rest stops in Pennsylvania (right outside Pittsburg) and Ohio and I only saw 4 or 5 Black folks and 2 Asians. I was shocked! I am thinking that it'll only get more pronounced as I head into Iowa tomorrow and Nebraska and Wyoming on Saturday.
At long last, the big day is here...it's time for your boy to hit the road and start that long drive out to Stanford. I'm exhausted from staying up until 4am and getting up at 8am to get my car loaded, but i'm finished with that. Now, I've just got to hit the shower and I'm out. I should have shipped more stuff because my car is filled to capacity, but I'll just know better for next time. I ended up shipping 11 box of assorted stuff for a total cost of $300!!! that's right...$300. I never, ever, ever want to move ever again.
By the way, I don't know how often I'll have internet access on the road, but I'll put up blog entries whenever I have a chance on my way out west.
OK, y'all know that I'm making plans to start my drive out to Cali next week, right? Well, I knew that I should get a tune-up for my car before leaving because I didn't want to break down in the middle of somewhere like Wyoming with no cell phone reception. So, I called up the local dealership for my car and planned to just get a tune-up and oil change scheduled...that's when stuff got really hectic.
The service guy told me that my car was due for its 4-year service (which I never even knew i had to get done) and proceeded to read off a laundry list of things that I needed to get done to my car as a part of this service. Basically, he's going to need my car for the whole day tomorrow to knock all of this stuff out. The final estimated cost of all this work...$997.00!!!! Can you believe that?!?!?! They might as well have added an extra $3.00 and made it an even grand. The sad partis that I don't want to test fate and not get any of the work done because I've got a 3,000 mile drive coming and can't afford for my ride to die on me.
For everyone reading this who is in the process of applying to school, please do yourself a favor and start saving up some extra cash for surprise expenses like this one as soon as possible.
I know that I could have put this story along with my other entry for today, but I had to make a separate one because it is nowhere near as good as that tale.
My group and I decided that we would get up early this morning and take a 2-hr boat ride out to the island of Anguilla to enjoy some snorkeling and lunch. As I said a couple of entries ago, I have had a strong fear of water for a while because I can’t swim, but I as convinced to go for the sake of group solidarity. The boat ride out there was cool and there were plenty of free drinks to keep us “happy” ;-)
Once we arrived at the snorkeling spot, I started having last second jitters. I asked the captain about the depth of the water that we were in and he replied that it was 12 feet deep, but that we’d all be alright because they had floatation belts for us. So, I put on the fins, belt, goggles, and snorkel and hopped in the water. It started off great. Although I noticed that the floatation belt didn’t seem to be keeping me afloat well, I was still whipping around that water like a trained swimmer. The things that I saw under the surface of the water were amazing. All of the coral, schools of fish, rocks, and plants blew my mind. I thought I was ready for another “VA done come up!” moment, but then things went south.
I was following my man Cameron and I noticed that I was about to hit a coral bed that was pretty close to the surface. So, I moved my arms to direct myself over the coral and got stung by a sea urchin. If you’ve never seen one of those things before, it looks like a black, spiny porcupine sort of plant that I didn’t think was a big deal. I didn’t even know that I’d been stung until I surfaced a few seconds later and noticed that my hand was throbbing. I showed it to be the folks in my crew and someone said “Oh my goodness, you need to get on the boat now to have them look at it”. At this point, I was about 75 yards away from the boat and I started swimming toward the boat, but it was different. I noticed that my arms and legs were feeling tired and I was having a hard time breathing. Then, it seemed like the floatation belt had stopped working for me and I couldn’t keep myself afloat. I kept on trying to kick to move forward, but I couldn’t get anywhere. First, I sort of yelled out “Hey, Cameron, come over here and help me right quick”, but he didn’t hear me. After a few more seconds, I felt like I was really going to go under, so I started screaming “HELP!” and some random dude from the boat came out to grab me along with Cameron. The two of them helped me toward the boat and then the captain came out with a floating bouy ring and took me the rest of the way to the boat.
Once I got on the boat, I still had a hard time catching my breathe and I felt like my life had flashed in front of my eyes. My girl Damali helped me realize that I’d just had my first Tony Soprano moment…a major panic attack. Looking back, I think I freaked out because I thought the sea urchin bite would poison in it that could do some damage. My eagerness to get back to shore along with my noticing that the water was so deep just made me lose it. People on the boat tried to check on me and tell me that it was all good, but I felt like I’d gone out like a “bia bia”. We ended up getting lunch soon after that and I even went back into the water (as far as I could stand up in) on the beach by the restaurant, but I still haven’t been able to shake the fact that the snorkeling damn near did me in. It looks like my water adventures are over for good…Poseidon tried to take me down and I’m not going to give him another chance to do it again…
Before I go, another RIP shout out goes to my man Rick James. He lived a hard life, but at least he can say he had fun in his time on earth. In the words of Dave Chappelle, “I’M RICK JAMES, B!TCH!!!”
I would have made this entry last night, but the wireless network at my hotel died for some reason. Anyways, I'm here now so let me get to it.
My man Cameron made another big baller move yesterday in St. Martin and this one is HUGE. He and I were looking for Orient Beach to go parasailing and got lost. Through a wild sequence of events, we ended up going to another timeshare presentation (this time at the Oyster Bay resort) and had to pose as half-brothers in hopes of getting a $500 cash prize. Well, this time around, the resort was on point like and arrow and they won us over. When it came time to talk about the money side of things, we realized that it would be too hard for us to handle the required payments when we would be on limited funds at Stanford/Sloan this year. We explained our situation to the assistant sales manager and he came up with a special hookup deal that we couldn't refuse...and each of us ended up buying timeshares. That's right, y'all...your boy is officially "international". I don't need to go into all the details here, but it is definitely a great set-up that we've got. As soon as we signed the paperwork, I looked at Cameron and once again had to say "VA done come up!!!!” I'm on cloud 9 right now. This vacation has become one for the ages. What a way to go out before making that move out to California! It looks like I'll have access to 2000 spots all over the world. I would have NEVER made a move like this if it weren't for the fact that I was about to go to business school. This MBA quest has resulted in a whole lot of life milestones for me so far. I can't wait to see what else is in store for me.
On a sad note, I received word yesterday morning from my sister that one of my uncles passed away after a long series of illnesses that he traced back to his time in the Vietnam War. He'd been sick for a long time, so I'm glad that he's finally going to get some peace. I wish Bush would keep real families like mine in mind before sending off a bunch of other people to Iraq to fight his war. I hope they don't have my uncle's funeral before I can get back to the States...R.I.P. Uncle Preston. *praying*
I can't make this a long entry because I'm about to grab some dinner with my peoples, but I just HAD to make an entry because I hit a major milestone for myself today. Before telling this story, I've got to preface it by saying that I can't swim a lick, so I have a great fear of deep water.
Today, my vacation crew and I decided to hit up Orient Bay Beach on the French side of St. Martin because we'd heard that it was the most popular beach on the island. It took us a while to get there, so we didn't arrive until about 5:30pm. Once we got there, we thought we'd just walk around, but we were approached by a guy who was renting out Wave Runner jet-skis for 35 minutes per run at $35. When my man Cameron and I heard that, we knew we had to jump on it. I was pretty scared because I thought about the possibility of falling off of it, but it was justone of those things that I had to do. Folks, it was OFF THE HINGES!!! Speeding along and doing donuts on top of that water had me amped up beyond belief. Every time I'd hit a wave fast and have a bunch of water spalsh in my face it was like I forgot my fear of the water a little more. Within 10 minutes, I was on that Wave Runner revving it up as fast as it could go and whippin' left and right like I was a seasoned pro. I don't know if people could hear me from the beach, but, if they could have, they would have heard a bunch of "VA WHAT!!!", "YEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH!", "THE CHAMP IS HERE!", and "DAYUM DAYUM DAYUM!!!" screams coming from me. It was one of the hypest feelings I've ever had to be out there on the water. As soon as we got back to shore, the first thing I said to Cameron (who is also from Virginia) was "VA done come up, blackman!". It's been over three hours since I got off of that jet-ski and i'm still getting chills thinking about that ride.
If you would have asked me a couple of years ago whether I'd ever do something like this, I would have been like "HECK NO!", but I've opened myself up to a lot of things since I started this MBA journey. I can't wait until I graduate in 2006 and I have some real money to actually do some truly bigtime things.
I'm sitting here in the bar area of my hotel right on the beach and all I can say is that St. Martin is paradise. I don't think I've ever seen beaches with such clean water and pretty scenery. I'm not a huge beach person but that may change by the end of this week. I'm supposed to be continuing my Excel review manual, but, for some reason, work just doesn't seem like the most prudent thing to do at the moment. :-)
Before I go, Ive got to let y'all know that I was married for about 3 1/2 hours today...well, not really, but I acted like I was hitched and went on a tour of a timeshare community in order to get some freee dinner coupons. My man Cameron and my girl Damali acted like a couple and then my girl Sally was my stand-in wife, so we could get the free gift. The presentation was supposedto last 90 minutes, but our guide was one of the most talkative people who has ever lived. And, to make matters worse, her manager (a very rude and scraggly French woman) made several disrespectful and condescending comments to us when we told her that we weren't interested in purchasing a timeshare. Can you believe that? We're just some kids trying to get the hookup and she had to go out like a bia-bia because we didn't want to drop $15K on a timeshare. It's all good though because I'll be sure to think about her raggedy behind while I'm grubbin' on the dinner that her company paid for :-)
I'll catch y'all later.