Meet Parm

Standing at 5'6" (5'9" with Katie's measuring tape), coming in at a weight undisclosed….EMILY PARM.....!

Nicknames: Parm, E-Peezy, Em, and the new Young Thunder (or YT for my street folks)

Best Known Quotes: Pirate Code!

Porn Star Name (Name of your first pet, name of the street you grew up on): Miss Tabitha Terrace

Things you will most miss about Madison: The terrace in the summer, amazing bike paths, farmer's market, finding new hobbies each summer

Places you are most excited to visit on the trip:

• Oh my gosh, I am so pumped to see Mount Rushmore! My freakish love for the National Treasure movies will not be able to be contained when I see those big stone heads. Look forward to future blog posts of my photo shoot with me picking their noses, squeezing some prestigious heads and adding my own face as the 5th one. I may or may not be planning a Cibola scavenger hunt…and to think Katie and Emmie considered removing it from the itinerary! I'm also thrilled to see Vancouver as it's been on my list for a long time along with sea kayaking in southern California.

Parm's Predicted Superlatives:

• First person to successfully change a bike/car tire (or first girl to flag down a man to help her with this task by showing skin or batting her eyes): Well as Katie and I went to a bike tire changing class last week to shore up our skills, I think we'll win out over Emmie for sure. I'm going to give the advantage to me out of sheer competitiveness. However, I do think Katie would succeed in attracting help from a qualified member of the opposite sex first and am going to leave it at that but you could ask her why she was given a flyswatter last week if you're curious…

• First person to burst into tears: I think Katie's going to get sentimental about leaving Madison when we roll out at 6am on Monday and we'll see a few misty teardrops

• Person who wins the award for campfire chef du jour: This is actually an interesting one - Katie's excellent at planning grand meals but excels at focusing on a single meal at a time while I'm better at imagining the things we can compose from the random items we have. I'll give Katie the win at the beginning and I'll finish strong with the scrappy leftovers as evidenced by how the three of us ate for the past two weeks on $45. (Props to Emmie for frugality as well)

• First person to ask for directions when we get lost: Emmie - especially if she's hungry at the time. There's no messing around with trying to find where we're going when she needs to eat. I'll try to persuade the group that my internal compass is right while Katie fiddles with her iPhone for a signal.

• First person to find a "lovely gentleman suitor" (that's for you Mom and Dad): Katie, see flyswatter reference above.

• First place where we consider turning around and going home: The Canadian border gives me a bit of worry – I have a daily reminder set to make sure everyone remembers to bring their passports and wouldn’t be surprised if there are at least 5 points where we go "doh, I forgot…"

• Person most likely to suction herself like a barnacle to other campers when it gets cold at night: Emmie's "little radiator" qualities are appealing and Katie always has gloves so I'm going to try to position myself between them in the tent. I'm thinking I can use the angle of goldilocks - this one's too tall (E) and this one's too short (K) that I can be just right in the middle to stay warm. Probably shouldn't have posted that for them to read now.

• Person most likely to get seriously Injured: Oh man, Katie takes this one – I'm immediately reminded of the sea urchin experience in Greece.

• Person most likely to request a "gold star" anytime she wins a competition that she made up and neither Katie nor Emmie agreed to participate in in the first place: No comment on this one other than just wait until it's raining and the two of them get board…guess who's going to be the hero with thinking up sweet games then? A few I have in mind already: fastest person to set up/take down camp, unpack/repack car, practice those bike tire changing skills mentioned above...

• First person to totally freak out: As someone who is an only child and lives alone...I'm going to need some time away from these two. If I forget to "use my words" and tell them this, I could easily win this one. Thankfully, they know that too and I'm sure will remind me of this :)

• First person to touch the Pacific Ocean: Emmie – the girl has long legs and can run fast

• First person to inappropriately use their can of mace (thanks Mr. McGuckin!): Thankfully the mace came with practice canisters which we immediately used for a water fight..well maybe not but those things have an intense shot. I don't think Emmie got as many practice shots in as Katie and I did so we might have a leg up here.

• First person to get pirate coded: As this is one of my favorite sayings, I must explain - Pirate Code is "all who fall behind are left behind" and works wonderfully at getting folks moving when threatened. I've been trying for 20 years to become more patient...I still suck at waiting for people when it's time to get moving. Unfortunately, Katie does not share my love of being on time :) I can guarantee you she'll get pirate coded at some point in the trip. At least once. We did make a deal that if she's late in the morning after our agreed upon departure time, she'll buy Emmie and me coffee. I'm looking forward to the smell of fresh brewed coffee as we roll into small town diners each day.

• Person most likely to meet a celebrity in L.A.: I'm going to miss this part of the trip due to a weekend family reunion in Nebraska (shout out to the Starks!), so while I'm living it up farm-style and river tanking in horse troughs I'm going to expect some good stories to come out of the weekend in LA. I'll go on the record and say that Emmie will meet some D-list music celeb that only she knows about from her bizarre memory of one-hit pop wonders.

• Best blogger: Here's how I expect this to go down – Katie will be super gung-ho about the blog the whole time and an excellent photo poster but may get overloaded trying to keep up with Facebook too. Emmie will do it out of principle and while not as enthusiastic about is as Katie, will think of great one-liners to add along the road. I think I'll get freaked out by how much personal information is out here on the internets about us and then say what the hell and keep blogging.