Day 1

The updates came quickly on Friday morning.

At 10:40 a.m., Emily called to say that she was late for her appointment with a throat specialist in Wake Forest. Half an hour later, she called again; the specialist was NOT going to take out her tonsils until August, which meant we were free to leave for our trip. At 1:00 p.m., Emily called to say that her car was still at the body shop and would not be road-worthy until Tuesday.

So that settled it. We were going to leave the following morning, we'd be gone until early August, and we were going to take my car. I left for Henderson, NC, planning to pick Emily up and take her back to our launching-off point in Richmond.

Packing sucked. There's no way to prepare for 6 weeks of tight containment in a Ford Taurus, other than to pack every item of clothing you own. We laid everything out on her bed, and I tried to limit my naysaying. It was hard.

"You're packing your swimming goggles?"

"Yes - got a problem with that?"

At 11:00 p.m., we'd thrown her belongings into the Taurus (which, incidentally, has yet to be named) and gunned it for Richmond. We arrived at 1:00 a.m., were greeted by a series of growls and barks from my parents' miniature pinscher, and went to sleep.

- Andrew