Lana and I shivered through a cold pre-Christmas in Chattanooga, some record-breaking chills including the evening I arrived and drove through a spontaneous ice storm. Ice coated the entire car, including the windshield wipers, which sounded like "swish-thud!, swish-thud!"
That night, after a long transit across country for me and some exhausting anticipation on Lana's part, we were deep in slumber and woken suddenly at 3 am by: A FIRE ALARM! We had to evacuate the hotel in the bitter cold. Luickily, Lana had new warm pjs!
We took it slow, and even walked the next day instead of drove to our usual muffin spot, where we invented several card games... a good start to the day!
I had shiped ahead of time a number of presents, so Lana was able to pick a few each morning, and even a few at night, making the most of a Christmas tradition away from home. In the evenings we had popcorn and watched movies like "School of Rock," and "Huckleberry Finn."
When I left we both cried a little, but we remember an excellent visit. I told her Amy and I are moving to Florida, so I'l be able to see her more often, (becauseI can drive.) She smiled and said that sounded really good to her!
So the long trip back to California began by driving to Nashville airport (2.5 hours), where the outbound plane was delayed 1.5 hours. So I got a beer. When we landed in Minneapolis, it was a whiteout, and incoming planes were delayed in holding patterns. A 9:40 departure time drifted to 10:10, then 10:30. then 10:55, then 11:30. When the pilots finally landed, we cheered, but quieted when we learned the stewerdesses had been diverted to Omaha, due to weather. Departure moved to 12:25. Finally some tired-looking stewardesses were lured to do double-duty and walked by our area to cheers, though they didn't smile.
I took some snapshots of the heavy snowfall as they got the plane ready. At about 12:45 we boarded, then sat still in a weird car-wash of de-icing fluids. I've never witnessed that before. This took almost 45 minutes. Meanwhile, the winds were blowing and the snow continued to fall at an increasing rate. I thought i saw ice re-form on thewings. But we launched, successfully, right into the snow soup, and I thought I felt the plane struggle, but kept my thoughts positive.
We vertically cleared the snowstorm, and flew into the jetstream, landing in Sacramento at about 250 am, a plane of survivors with universally dry, red-rimmed eyes, with no coffee in sight...
