We're off!

It's 3:15 pm on Sunday, October 3rd, 2004. Every day is full of last-minute tasks. Yesterday Lane sold the Nissan Quest to a local used car dealer. He spent today running final errands and trying to figure out how to register online for Roxanne's college financial aid when most of our financial records are in a garage in El Segundo. In half an hour Lane leaves to deliver our other car, a 1965 Checker wagon (see Lane's Checker web page here), to its storage location at the home of "Mr. Checker Parts", Joe Pollard (see Joe's web site), in Chatsworth, CA about an hour from here. After that we'll be carless. We'll get on a hotel shuttle to LAX around 7 am tomorrow and fly to Tampa.
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IMG_2088sm.JPG IMG_2087sm.JPG 7:29 pm --  It's done. Lane's baby will get washed tomorrow, get her new car cover over her, and settle down for a long sleep in the dirt and weeds next to a dozen or so other Checkers from Joe's collection. (He currently owns close to 400 Checkers, of which around 100 are driveable. He hires them out to movies. In "Catch Me If You Can", he maxed out at 55 running, driving Checkers on one day during the filming). Joe's going to drive her about once a month to shows and cruises. It's nice to know she'll be appreciated in our absence.

After one final (we hope) emergency -- when we called to schedule the airport shuttle, the hotel informed us their shuttle doesn't go to the airport, despite several notices in the room to the contrary -- we're settling down to a Domino's pizza feast before hitting the hay.

We can't WAIT to be on the plane and IN THE AIR. Once that happens, it will at least be fairly certain we'll make it to Florida! It has seemed as if every day these past few days has been just one opportunity for failure and defeat after another, with the challenge of turning every roadblock into a victory. Our lives have been very "single-strung" -- not many back-up options, not much margin. Once we and our boat are in Florida (preferably in the same location), most of that should be behind us.