ARCHIVES - 1996 to FOREVER

I got to the airport about 30 minutes early, and the boys' plane came in on time....

They both looked good and happy and ready to start an adventure... that made three of us.

We immediately headed for St Louis via I-70... I-70 is gonna be with us most of the day.

It was right about midnight, and I drove until about 08:00. Watched the sun tinge the horizon about 04:00, I didn't realize that it came up so early.

The boys had been sleeping since about 01:30, and about 05:00 I saw a deer standing by the road, looking like she was ready to jump. Reflexively, I hit the horn, since anything else was impossible to do in time. Luckily, she turned her head to see where the noise had come from, and leapt across as viewed in my rear-view mirror..

Lucky bit number one....

Tyler took over driving, and we were soon breakfasting at a BoB Rogers... where the road bird conversation was started.

And properly digressed as we got tireder and tireder....

A road bird is, of course, a bird found close to, or on, a road. Then there are sky birds, and lawn birds... you get the drift.

Exhaustion is quite a high, given the right circumstances and the right company, heh.

Median machete. Way, way too funny, right?

We did make good time, and we had just entered into Pennsylvania when JD suddenly came to a halt.

An accident right ahead of us, maybe 30 seconds, had injured two motorcycle drivers.

Not going into gory details, I just hope that they're all right... about 50/50, I would say offhand.

After about 45 minutes, we were sent off of the road so that an additional life-flight chopper could land. We headed off south, first to find a bathroom, then to eventually rejoin I-70... which a trucker told us was already closed some miles up the road.

JD was talking about how much ground a helicoptor could cover, and I was fiddling with the radio, trying to get a station.... and immediately after he said, "ground to cover" the singer on the random station that I had stopped on repeated the phrase from the lyrics... really spooky, yes it was.

We bought some lottery tickets. Damned right.

Only got a little bit lost the rest of the way, made it in about 20:00, I think it was. Good to see Dan again, and he and Tyler have not met since 1989... JD came up several years ago to visit, though.

Got my shower, now it's off to get some sleep. Been a long 24 hours, and a very fun one. My kids are wonderful.

And so is my wife and grandkids... don't want to leave anyone out, so the stepkids? They're wonderful too.

And I'm getting even sillier, heh.