And so begins another Police Unity Tour for me. I came in a few days early to lend a hand with logistics and landed squarely in the middle of trailer loading, uniform sorting, plaque fetching, hotel handling and all the other last minute details that go on behind the scenes. After helping out with a bunch of errands (yes, they are letting me drive in NJ), we went to the last PUT meeting of the year, which consisted of a fair amount of information about the route and some of the quirks of lodging 650+ riders along this year's route, combined with a lot of people picking up various pieces of riding uniforms and other gear. It was a great chance for me to see and catch up with some of the participants.
After all that fun, we headed out to start making the luggage tags. Every rider gets 3 tags, each printed with their name and the hotels they will be in each night. Every tag gets laminated, the stuffed in an envelope with a bunch of other stuff. We called it quits just after midnight, having gotten through the Ds...it's gonna be a long day tomorrow.

Stats for the day:

Minutes spent holding waiting to land in the clouds in Newark: 25

Laminators burned out laminating luggage tags: 1

Blog posts lost to wonky wi-fi: 1