Blog by Pete Jackson

Time is starting to become the enemy. It’s that part of the trip where the three of us need to buckle down for some tough traveling. There is much less time between cities going into this last month of the tour, so it’s going to be many more sleepless nights. Don’t get me wrong: this whole trip has been trying. Take, for example, last week. We left Chicago at 12AM and drove through the night to get to Cincinnati for a broadcast opportunity that had not officially been locked yet. We also did not have a place to stay, so if there was any time in our lives that we could officially say we were “headed nowhere,” that was it.

That night was just another reminder of how things can go when you’re on the road. Things come up, schedules instantly change and most of the time we’re moving so quickly that we don’t even take a moment to notice our surroundings. (Joe had just mentioned the fact that even when we’re driving 10 hours, we don’t realize that we’re passing a beautiful sunset because we’re buried in our computers trying to keep everything on schedule.) When it’s just 3 guys, an around-the-clock operation and nothing but road, you can sometimes experience moments of disconnect much like Tom Hanks did in the movie Castaway. Although each one of us has our own “Wilson,” sometimes it takes other people's humanity to remind us of our own. (For you youngsters, Wilson is the volleyball that Tom Hanks “befriends” while he is stranded on a deserted island.)

That’s why we are thankful for those rare times when we’re tugged away from the work by some of the people we cross paths with. This note is a thank you to everyone who has given us a glimpse of humanity on this trip thus far - whether you have opened your doors to us, volunteered to act in one of our videos, come out to see the shows, or checked up on us daily via the website or Facebook.

As your reward, I have put together a short game of connection. Try to match the COB cast/crew member with their “Wilson” from the trip.