The Journey Begins |
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| Wednesday: I Left RI around 9:30 am, got into Boston around 10:30 (on the highway) but took until 11:30 am to make the short distance through the city (fun with traffic) to the Oyster House. Circled around looking for parking, and as time kept ticking away, was forced to park in the Government Center garage nearby, and pay highway robbery rates. Headed to the restaurant, getting a bit dampened, and found some people gathered inside. I recognized Melissa right away, and knew the rest had to be the others. Eventually all 8 arrived, (the seven who quested, and Nicole, who was unable to come with us. The seven were: John, Melissa, Andrea, Ilana, Rick, Tora, and myself.) A seat was being saved for Treska at lunch, but alas, she did not arrive. John enlivened our dinner with a story about consequences resulting from parking legally in Atlanta. |  |
| Outside Shoney's | |
We headed out separately to get the mini vans at the airport. They were red and white, and my car is blue, so we made quite the patriotic caravan. Exited the rental place and got on the main highway without trouble, (which I heard was a bit more difficult last year) and the Journey truly began. John drove the red van (named Red Squadron by Melissa) with Andrea and Tora as passengers, Melissa drove the white (Gold Squadron) with Rick and Ilana her passengers, and myself alone (Rogue Squadron) (even if I had decided to there would have been no place to leave my car in Boston that wouldn't have cost much money.) Drive, drive, drive, drive, drive... are we there yet?... drive, drive... why does John keep changing lanes.... drive, stop at tollbooth.. fumble for money, hurry hurry catch up with them... find white van.... where is the red one? drive drive.... After about 40 miles of following Melissa, and no sign of John, I decided to speed up and pull alongside, worried that I might have been following the wrong white van (it could have happened.. I did totally lose sight of them, and they had gone astray from the Mapquest version of the route) I saw that yes it was them. We stopped a bit later at a rest stop. Soon phone contact was established, and it was determined that Red Squadron was only 4 miles behind us. We then pulled off on the next exit, and into a restaurant -- Shoney's. After a meal we continued on, and on, finally reaching the border. Melissa, was first, then myself --a bit flustered at the questions at one point, just said, "I'm with them" in explanation of why I was going to Ottawa. It seemed to take forever to get to Montreal, and then Ottawa, but we did arrive about 11 pm and get our suite, which ended up as another suite, where we divided up the sleeping space. I unfortunately slept poorly on a very lumpy bed that folded out from a couch. | |