Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (literally)

I am sorry to report that tragedy has finally cast its pall over our grand adventure.

Now, some would say that racking up a 15-year-old honda civic's 195,000th mile is not something to be attempted on a 1000 mile road trip with the car packed completely full of stuff, and toting a homemade wooden roof-rack to boot. Some would see that little car, in all its duffle-bag-filled glory, and say "what is this, a joke?"



But we really believed that Little Blue had it in him, so we went for it.

The idea was to deliver the Little Blue Car (full of all of our non-boat stuff) back to Maryland so that we could formally take our leave of Fort Lauderdale, footloose and automobile free, and head for the keys. Everything was business as usual for the first two legs of the journey (apx. 300 miles to Gainesville, and a subsequent 250 to Hilton Head). After a delightful evening in South Carolina in the company of our dear friends the Hursts, we woke up the next morning refreshed, and ready to put the ole' pedal back to the metal. Which we did.... for about 6 miles.


It was in the midst of a left hand turn in a crowded intersection that Little Blue conveniently began its death throes, locking into fifth gear and coming to a complete stop. With the flashers on, I managed to gun it hard enough in fifth gear to get it through the intersection, and turned immediately onto the nearest residential street, where we had a jolly time waiting for triple A to arrive and haul us to the mechanic, where the verdict was that for $900 worth of what basically amounts to vehicular life-support, we could cruise out of there some time in the next week and probably get the car back to Maryland. So I said "what is that, a joke?" and promptly divested Little Blue of all of our worldly treasures and donated it to Habitat for Humanity.

Good thing for us, Rob has been secretly converting the Hurst Mansion to a storage facility (shhhh - don't tell Sarah!!!), so we were able to store some things with them, and the rest of our belongings accompanied us on the 11 hour journey on the Palmetto Express Amtrak from Savannah, GA to Union Station. The journey was relatively uneventful, with the exception of a rather large man two rows behind us who snored loudly for about 9.5 out of the 11 hours of the ride, and at one point snored so loudly and with such gusto that the everyone in the train car busted out laughing.

We rolled into Union Station around 8:00 on Saturday night, and dragged all of our belongings down to the metro station, where I proceeded to get stuck in the turnstile because of all of the stuff I was trying to carry before finally boarding the train, where we unapologetically offended the citizens of D.C. with our mountain of duffel bags and boxes. By the time we arrived in Shady Grove around 9:30, I was basically delirious but they (Charlie) tell me I ate an entire bag of jelly beans before passing out in Charlie's parents' basement.

But all's well that ends well, and after a really lovely, albeit brief, visit with parents and Gran, we flew back to Ft. Lauderdale today to find the boat still afloat (ohhhh yeahhhhh!!!!!), and with all of our stuff still in it (double ohhhh yeahhh!!!!). Tomorrow, we sail!!