...and here we go.

It's September 20th; the Tyler Ward Crew is officially on tour.

Day 1 finds our merry band of heroes departing the beautiful homestead of Colorado for the greener, wetter, Pacific Northwest-ier city of Seattle, WA. Along the way they will traverse the largely-uninhabited frontier that is Wyoming and the rugged ranges of Utah.

After nine hours of drive time in our 15-passenger APC (aptly named "Colonel Mickey"), the band have found ourselves holed up in Ogden, UT for the night. Highlights from what might seem like an otherwise slow news day include a victory in my very first Madden 2012 game (the randomly-selected Chicago Bears bested the Seattle Seahawks 34-24, and, yes, Col. Mickey comes equipped with the one-two punch of XBOX 360 & HDTV) and the discovery via Michael Lewis' Moneyball that the difference between a .270 and .300 batting average (IE: the difference between a journeyman ballplayer who's name you forget and a first class Hall-of-Famer) is a single hit every two weeks. Great stuff.

Col. Mickey's junk in the trunk: 200 cubic feet of sheer awesome.

Tomorrow finds us with nine more road hours on the docket; for now, Real Time with Bill Maher seems to have appeared on my hotel television set, which means, good people, that it's definitely time to unplug and shutdown.