Oct 20 - no one left behind

A multi-legged journey, leg two.

We left Stef's shortly after 9am, having seen Aaron off to work and Kylie and Lauren off to school. In spite of the cool temps and rain, Kylie went off in shorts and a heavy jacket ... hmmm. Oh well, I was outside in my short-sleeves so who am I to question !

Sandy's dentist appointment was at 9:30 so while I waited for her, I adjusted the car tire air pressures (up), added a few liters of gas to get us to Buffalo (Canadian prices are higher), bought a Subway sub for later (put that in the cooler), gave Abby a stretch (and a pee), and consumed a Timmy's bagel (to keep me until lunch) and went inside the dentist office and read for about five minutes. It doesn't take much to use up an hour in this life ... I don't know about the next but God did create the Earth in a day, so they must be longer !

From the dentist we hit the road. Traffic was ok and we made good time. We stopped once -- first at the border -- we'd have been in real trouble without stopping there ! -- and then at the second service center on I90. One stop is pretty well the minimum without modifying our fuel tank.

We left at 10:30; we arrived at 6pm ... that's a 7:30 trip, which is pretty good. That time includes about 15 minutes or so at the border. The officer was very thorough, cars moved slowly. Luckily there were only a half-dozen cars in front of us. All of the usual questions, we only had about a $100 of odds and ends and that includes my boxes of fruit bars. Packed to the ceiling, he hardly even looked, because you couldn't see anything. The two storage bins on the hitch-rack ... he never asked about those, but had an officer wanted to play "gotcha", they'd have been disappointed by seeing a Ryobi saw and shop vac, nothing of interest. I'll have to take those off the rack today and open them up, hopefully they are dry inside.

The hum from my tires is so loud I can hardly hear myself think. I can't listen to music. I cannot hear Sandy. I was thinking that I might replace the tires here in Reading, but decided to bear with it until we get to Florida. I won't buy these tires again. I had thought that the General Grabbers were bad, but these are worse than bad. Every once in a while I'll hit a section of pavement where the tires go quiet and it's a huge relief ... but those are few and far between. Sara had saved one of the visitors spots for us but as it turned out, there were two open all night. The humming was finished for the day.

Upon our arrival, Abby raced over to see Jeffrey; Emma came running out for hugs; Sara was all smiles. Volumes were unspoken. Words were not necessary. We took comfort just in being together. Later on emotions ran close to and over the surface, as we sat and talked after Emma had gone to bed. Jeffrey talked about the counseling sessions for Emma and the ones for him and Sara. Of the two, Sara is much better at getting her emotions out, crying, talking, on Facebook and in her blog. Women are much better at this than men. Emma doesn't really understand why Alexander doesn't come home from heaven ... doesn't realize that it's a one-way trip.

Sandy and I played musical chairs with Emma, her version. In her version, we dance around the chairs to the music in her head and we all have chairs. That's a very good game.

No one gets left behind in Emma's version.

We all move onward, like it or not.