Maybe not the Kessel run, but certainly the Louisiana equivalent! Maybe I should back up a bit.
My daughter decided she wants to visit some colleges in the Northeast. My wife and I aren’t really excited about her moving that far away for college, so we conspired to send her during what could be the worst time of year - February. That was solid advice from a friend of mine who went to school up there. It should be cold and dreary with none of the joy seen around Christmas. Perfect!
In support of this plan, my wife found round-trip tickets from New Orleans to New York for an excellent price and I spent a good chunk of my earned hotel points to get them a hotel for a week. Part of what made the flight so cheap is the departure time - 7:00 am.
So, today’s dilemma was how to get my wife and daughter to New Orleans and still get my son to school. I decided that a taxi would be too expensive and I didn’t want to pay for parking for a week, so I figured my only option was to drive them myself. We called in a favor to get my son a ride to school.
I planned to drive back to Louisiana yesterday afternoon, but work conspired against me and I didn’t leave until almost five. Despite a major slowdown due to construction and two wrecks on I-10, I still managed to make it home in less than five hours. That wasn’t a record, but it was a solid showing given the non-stop drizzle and rain. The ladies were still packing when I got home, so I set an alarm and headed straight to bed.
Then I missed the alarm.
We all missed our alarms.
I awoke at 4:15. We were supposed to be on the road at 4:30. While we didn’t make the 4:30 deadline, we did make the 4:45 fallback departure time. After we loaded up, the ladies went to sleep while I put the hammer down. Our little Outback made excellent time despite the I-10 left-lane nannies. I pulled up to the terminal and dropped them off. The curbside check-in line was probably 50 people deep, but they had plenty of time to get through check-in and security.
I drove away with a smile on my face. Did I beat 12 parsecs? Probably not. But my ladies made their flight and are off to brave the bad weather in New York. Cold and windy? Perfect. :)
