Sweet home, Alabama
February 16th, 2008 Neal
Thankfully, we all made it.
Despite some bad weather on Thursday morning (4 inches of snow in our driveway when I left), my three-day drive to Birmingham, Alabama went off without a hitch. Gloomy skies for most of the journey, but dry roads from Kansas to Alabama. Many thanks to Debbie and Rex in Towanda, Kansas for a fine steak and finer company on Thursday night, to the Days Inn in Fulton, Mississippi for being worse than I had hoped but better than I had feared, and to the makers of Red Bull for keeping me awake during the drive. I entered Birmingham around 9 o’clock this morning, and was unpacked in our new apartment before noon.
Tara and Anna made it to the Denver airport with time to spare, courtesy of my parents who got up much earlier than retired folk are wont to do in order to ferry their daughter-in-law and grandkidlet to DIA (thanks Mom and Dad!). Tara managed to get the folks at United to see reason and actually seat both mother and child next to one another (evidently the airline computers see no problem in seating a mother three rows away from her two-year-old daughter…), and the flight to Birmingham proved blessedly uneventful thanks in no small part to a portable DVD player and several “Dora the Explorer” videos.
Our apartment here is really quite nice, and we’re in a fantastic part of town (I felt quite under-dressed wearing only jeans and a t-shirt when I walked into the Panera at “The Summit” to use the restroom…). Most of all we’re happy to be together once again, and happy that this whole scheme worked out mostly according to plan.
We’ve got the day off tomorrow to sleep in, take a look around, and generally get our bearings. Anna’s ordeal starts Monday with her orientation, casting, and first round therapy at UAB.
Filed under: Adventures,Alabama,Family,Travel
