Road Trip Debriefing

I got off-duty at 3pm on Monday and The Wife was waiting for me. I changed into people clothes in the parking garage (thankfully without getting arrested) and we hit the road. It was sleep-eat-drive for about 10 hours, Atlanta traffic managed to be awful even at midnight. Why the powers-that-be in Georgia decided that 2 miles of 2-lane traffic followed by 2 miles of 4-lane traffic followed by 2 miles of 2-lane traffic should be repeated for half the state I will never know. I just know that it was stupid.
We hit South Carolina and realized that we were on schedule to reach the interesting parts of NC at about 4am, so we crashed out for a few hours in a hotel instead. Rolled into Meg's at about 10, said "hi" to the dog (which took about 3 hours) as well as Meg, Russell, and the Interchangeable Emmas* and hung out for a bit. I took a nap while The Wife played dog games and then we all went out for some very acceptable Italian at a place called Barreca's.
The next two days we spent in Charlotte hanging out with YJ and Jenny and the Geezers. It was very low-key as the kids were sick (and thus only moving at Mach 1). Halley met Jack the Cat who did not like her one bit. I ate way too much, slept a bunch, and generally had a good time.
The trip back was uneventful until Bay St. Louis, where we hit a fairly impressive thunderstorm and I decided to pull off and wait it out. Anybody who has driven with me knows that it takes a lot to get me off the road, and this certainly did it. Fortunately, it was just a feeder band so by the time we found an exit, pulled over, and fueled up the weather had cleared up again. The Wife had the foresight to check the weather, which indicated that more bad was coming in an hour or two, which gave us just enough time to hightail it back to N'awlins and unpack--I literally grabbed the last of the luggage just as it started to pour.

*with thanks to Terry Pratchett--see _Night Watch_