Memory lane

My week-long travels through South Florida reminded me of several trips:Miami area: My family made a couple of trips to the Miami while we lived in Gainesville. During one trip we camped in the Everglades (something I replicated twice with others), and on another trip we traded houses with the family from whom we had bought the Palm View Estates house – who had moved to Hollywood, FL, where I stayed for the conference last week. I don’t remember their house so well, but remember going to the Orange Bowl parade in Miami. I didn’t think so much this past week about Everglades trips.

Once as a family we visited the Fort Myers area, but I only remember going to Sanibel Island. During the mid and late 1990s and while I lived in Sarasota, I visited the Miami area several time: Once a flew there and stayed for 4 ½ days, doing research for my book – leaving Columbus, Ohio, just minutes after turning in grades. I thought about this trip when I was planning this trip, for it’s the only time I had contact with the Fort Lauderdale airport (I flew into there) and stayed on Miami Beach. A few years before I stopped in Jupiter and driven to Tampa before and after five days on Miami Beach for my first American Sociological Association meeting. And before that I had flown into Miami to meet Abby, whose parents were staying on Miami Beach. That ASA experience was memorable for a variety of reasons: One was – I flew into Miami, even though many tourists were having trouble renting cars and then getting carjacked. And, sure enough, one of my New School classmates got carjacked in a rental car. Last week was the first time I’ve flown into Miami since then (although I tried to route our Guatemala flights through Miami – unsuccessfully – note that in the book trip that followed my ASA trip I flew into Fort Lauderdale, not Miami). On the ASA and book trip I got to spend a decent amount of time on South Beach, on the second trip interviewing people around the beach. I also visited various friends and their families, including two I visited this time (Andrea and Daniel) and one I didn’t (Greg and his family subsequently moved to Texas). At some point in there I went to Miami Beach for “family weekend” at the Barbara Brennan school, which was then meeting at a hotel in Miami Beach. Then weeks before I headed to Tallahassee, then to Minnesota, away from Sarasota (and two months before 9/11), I visited Daniel and Andrea again.

A year before this, in late August 2000, on Stephanie and Vincent’s first amazing trip to visit me in Sarasota, on Sunday we drove down to Fort Myers, where her great aunt and family lived (with their Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs and the dog that helped inspire the Frisco acquisition – with all those famous pictures from that trip) – lived in Fort Myers Shores (where she and her extended family lived for some 25 years before Lana and Dick moved up to Tennessee (pictures to be posted eventually) – there are still cousins there – some of them drove up to Ohio for Aunt Catherine’s funeral – but I didn’t look them up – on a Thanksgiving visit by Papa Larry to Tallahassee and Bradenton – he rented a car one day and drove down to Fort Myers Shores to visit with them.) We stopped by the Ford-Edison mansions (before a renovation). Then we happened upon the Shell Factory store/attraction, on Tamiami Trail in North Fort Myers on our way home, which she had visited with her grandmother and father in past trips she made to Fort Myers, when her grandmother was alive. In and around Bradenton and Sarasota – and even around Tampa and St. Pete – I thought of various other visits they had made to see me in Sarasota and in turn me to see them in Bradenton (including that worldwind Memorial Day weekend Saturday in Tampa and St. Pete (eight years ago this coming weekend) and then – critically – the next Sunday – when we drove to Myakka Springs state park with the dog, through Arcadia (where Aunt Lana had once lived), and then Stephanie urged us to keep going to visit Zora Neale Hurston sites – putative, at least – around Lake Okechobee and in Fort Pierce (not all so putative, as it turned out). (Of course, don’t forget our trip to Orlando several years ago, when Mom (and sometimes) me were at the Florida AAUW meeting, Vincent was at an anime convention, and Stephanie and I visited the botanical gardens in Orlando and then Eatonville, where Zora Neale Hurston grew up.

(Of course, just 1 ½ years ago – I think – was my last visit to Bradenton and Sarasota, when I drove down from Tampa – hours before a conference I was attending was to start there – and did my favorite widest arc through both of our old neighborhoods and out on the beaches – Anna Maria Island, Bradenton Beach, Longboat Key, St. Armands Key, and Lido Key – Several times my family came from Gainesville to visit Sarasota, including the Ringling Museum and Asolo Theater, St. Armands Key and Lido Key, and even the antique car museum and New College. On this trip I overlapped with where I went 1 ½ years ago – but I purposely did something things – skipping some things I did last time (before I got my digital camera and before blogging – the beaches, the Presbyterian church, and downtown Sarasota)).

And then there’s another gripping Memorial Day memory. Four years ago today (Tuesday) or tomorrow, Grandma Martha arrived in Bradenton to help us finish packing – and several of the people I visited with in the past 24 hours (Marilyn, Emma, and Caroline) also helped us pack – while Vincent said good-bye to his Manatee School for the Arts friends – including in a party after school Friday) – and then we pulled out Saturday morning. The way I tell the story isn’t literally true – but of course I thought of it as I was driving across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge at lunchtime today. At lunchtime on Memorial Day Saturday 2005, I was driving the big rental truck over the bridge – on the way to Louisville) – overlapping the beautiful Tampa Bay and Fort Desoto Beach on a sunny morning – and turned to Stephanie and said: Now, tell me – Why is it again that we’re moving away from here?

(Six months later – the last time Stephanie, Vincent, and Frisco have been to Sarasota/Bradenton – the four of us visited a few days before Christmas – we didn’t really visit my New College friends then – but visited Marilyn. Stephanie was in Orlando a couple of years ago with Angie, for a conference, and Marilyn, Brantley, and Emma drove over to visit – but Marilyn told me she felt pretty sick during that visit. (Marilyn’s mother loves the Kentucky Derby, and they’ve all talked about getting up there, but getting Marilyn and her family up there would be quite an undertaking.) One month before, Stephanie and Grandma Martha met at the Orlando airport, and then they drove to the AAUW in West Palm Beach – which I thought of as I drove past West Palm Beach on the freeway (back in Gainesville days my family and I only went there once and I skipped it for my book trip. After 4 ½ days in Miami, I stopped in downtown Fort Lauderdale to interview Mom’s AAUW friend, the Broward County historian, before heading across Alligator Alley to interview Andrew and Jan’s old diving instructor. Instead of trying to get to Ford-Edison (since I knew it closed early), I detoured and drove through Immokalee (site of agricultural worker organizing) before making it to the Tampa area.)

There’s one very important trip I left off. During spring break 1984 (25 years ago – if I’m counting right), Melanie and I headed to Tallahassee while Cindy and one of her brothers headed to West Palm Beach. Melanie, Cindy, and I were all housemates in the “Red House” in Swarthmore, and Melanie and I were starting to go out. (I’m remembering a somewhat ill-fated foray down to Sarasota with Abby – while we were staying with Todd in Tampa – when the recently resuscitated Fiesta broke down in Bradenton, and we had to wait for it get fixed).) Melanie and I visited Todd in Inverness (I’ve driven through there within the past couple of years), and then we slept in our car in the Holiday Inn parking lot on Lido Key. Then we drove past Avon Park (where I also went on my book tour) and then stopped on the shores of Lake Okechobee (which Melanie remembered from Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”). There we came across an African-American woman and her grandson who had been fishing on the lake. Somehow the grandson had become trapped in the trunk, and somehow I crawled back through the back seat to rescue him – or something like that. We kept driving along the lake and the canals that empty the northern Everglades into the Atlantic and picked up Cindy at a campgrounds in West Palm Beach. After visiting the Everglades and Naples (which I did not replicate this trip . . . OK – I’ll be frank – Just now I think I’m combining trips. The Okechobee/West Palm Beach trip that included visits to the Everglades, Naples, back to Avon Park, and to St. Augustine was a later trip, after the spring break trip (I think). For spring break 1984, Melanie, Cindy, and I went to Tallahassee, but it was still cold and rainy there. So around Wednesday we got back in the car and continued south. We wound up in Fort Myers on Thursday morning. We drove over to Sanibel Island where we stayed on the beach. This situation became three’s a crowd a little on the beach. Even though it was a little cloudy, we got a little sunburnt and a sea shell – at the world’s third best seashell – cut her foot and was bleeding. We wound up staying in a cheap motel in town – the Korean-owned and run Green Wave Motel (I remembered it partly because of the Green Wave is the mascot of Tulane University in New Orleans – probably an unintentional connection). Sunburnt and all we went to Fort Myers Beach to eat dinner. Probably the next day we headed down to Naples to connect with Andrew and Jane there.

One more trip I remembered: In very early May 2000, having just returned from Ohio and finished (for the most part) my dissertation research, I went for job interviews for one-year jobs at central PA’s Bucknell, where Abby had taught (I bombed), at central Michigan’s Albion (where Andrew taught), and then – at a school I had always wanted to teach at – Sarasota’s experimental, progressive, four-year public liberal arts college, New College. I remember I flew down to Tampa Sunday afternoon, rented a car, and drove on Interstate 75 to University Parkway, and found my motel (in the Day’s Inn which ended up being blocks away from where I lived for the year). Then I hopped back in the rental car and drove the three or four miles to St. Armand Circle, which my family and I had visited several times when I was a child – and had supper there (before heading back to the motel for one of my TV shows). In the morning I met the person who became my sponsor/mentor the next year, Penny (a sociologist) for breakfast, talked with a sociology class about my research, had tea with some students, and had lunch with Sarah, the person whose place I ended up taking for the next year (and who I’m still friends with). I remember walking around the campus (and being ferried around by Sarah). I sat in on Sarah’s class in the building on the bay (where I soon had an office – though I never taught there) and sat in a great class, a social theory class taught by David – in the same building – which I compared favorably with seminars at Swarthmore and the New School – and which helped save me on the college. It was a beautiful early May day – and I wore the same clothes more or less that I wore at the conference last week at Hollywood Beach – and I left with a good feeling (somewhat unjustifiably good in hind sight) about teaching in New College and living in Sarasota (Penny also showed me the house where I ended up living for a year). Amazingly, a week later I was back in NYC agonizing about which of the three offers to take (I ultimately picked New College). Interesting trip with several features I was to replicate this past week (flying out of Tampa, rental car transaction there, driving over the Skyway bridge, walking around New College campus, etc., etc.)

Interesting memories throughout.

-- Perry

Mother's Day weekend

Mother's Day weekend 2009 started out with a walk with Stephanie, Frisco, and me. Frisco is not as tough on small dogs as he is on big dogs, and this little dog is one he had met before, Munchkin. They got along pretty well.

Friso was then off with me for a regular doctor's visit. I felt a little bit bad after Dr. Kaur (below) and her colleague poked and prodded him (two shots, one blood sample, a rectal thermometer reading, and two nose drops!).

The animal theme continued as we stopped - on our way out of town - at the local government animal shelter to renew Frisco's license (now armed with new shot records). The licensing part was easy. But Stephanie insisted on looking at the dogs at the shelter (we had left Frisco home). Sure enough she found some dogs - including a poor, sight-impaired Yorkie who will probally never get adopted. I steered clear of this, figuring emotional attachment and raising the hopes of dogs and shelter staff. We can't afford another dog, and Frisco wouldn't tolerate it.

A couple of weeks later investigators were there too, checking out allegations of fraud and mismanagement against the shelter.

The shelter is south of town and stopped there not just because Frisco was due for annual license renewal (made necessary partly because of a animal control issue we faced a couple of years ago) but also because we were headed south of town anyway. On the way to our destination we somewhat inadvertantly drove around the first of the small towns we checked out on Saturday: Shepherdsville, KY - an almost incongruous combination of a giant flea market, an old-timey Main Street downtown, and a slew of fast food joints and big box retailers just a block away, next to the interstate. Once we crossed to the correct side of the highway, we were soon at our destination. Stephanie has long been a shoe afficianado, and about 10 years ago Stephanie began to discover that one of the reasons why her feet hurt so bad was that she wore lots of bad shoes(not enough arch support). So she began experimenting with more expensive shoes - finding stores in Tallahassee, St. Paul, Sarasota, and now Louisville that carry shoes by Dansko, Birkenstock, and the like. A major on-line shoe retailer - from whom she bought me also not cheap shoes a couple of years ago for my birthday - it turns out - although it's officially headquartered in Nevada - has their warehouse south of Louisville - near Shepherdsvile - and also near the United Parcel Service hub at the airport, south of town. Zappos.com, Stephanie learned earlier this spring, has an outlet store in that warehouse. The warehouse - pictured below from the road - is, as you can see, very big.

Below is Stephanie standing outside the outlet store door.

Once we got into the store, given the size of the warehouse, it was small and a tad disappointing.

Once Michael (below) helped us, we found some Dansko shoes, and we picked up that you really have to go there pretty regularly to find stuff if you're looking for something in particular. Stephanie was (looking for something in particular), which she didn't find. She did get a good-price pair of shoes (Vincent and I usually object is she doesn't spend at least $90), but we could relax that here. She got a pair of Danskos for 1/3 the regular price.

I also looked a little, but may have to come back when my current Zappos shoes wear out even more. From Zappos we drove an exit south, instead of north (towards home), on Interstate 65, to the Bardstown exit Soni and I had missed in January. Bardstown is a town south of Louisville - the cradle of Catholicism in KY (even before Covington) - home of several nearby distilleries and Catholic institutions, including the monastery Penny, Mom, and I visited John at in summer 1987 - when he was staying there (where the Catholic theologian Thomas Merton once lived) - and a town I believe the FL summer Latin tour went through in 1979 - on the way to Lansing, Michigan. I've driven through here twice now in January on the way to and from our church officer retreat at a nunnery. On Mother's Day weekend Sunday, Stephanie and I drove through it - past the restaurant where Soni and I ate in January, past the state park where the "Stephen Foster" musical is performed (Stephen Foster apparently wrote "My Old KY Home" after a visit to Bardstown), past the Chinese buffet where I ate 1 1/2 years ago on the way to the retreat, past the old courthouse square, past the dinner train the runs out of Bardstown, and past several old distilleries (and some kind of exhibit area near one). Some of these distilleries feature huge warehouse-looking - probably vats where the whisky ages - including the last ones we visited (pictured below) - I think for the Heaven Hill liquor company - that are really kind of peculiar looking, almost prision-like.

On the way home we also drove through Mt. Washington, in northern Bullitt County, and then in on Bardstown Road. We stopped at an Indian restaurant we had noticed months ago, that the proprietor of another favorite restaurant of ours had recommended, and spent a while there (it was good but service was slow). During our time there we got a fateful call from Vincent, who told us he had left the dog in the backyard (which he is not supposed to do - thanks to Frisco's separation anxiety, the dog wines which annoys the neighbors if any of them are home - all the more so because he didn't have any idea when we were coming home). As it is, he wanted us to pick him up at his girlfriend's - which we said we couldn't do, since we were still waiting for our food and - as soon as we were done eating - we'd need to rush home to rescue the dog - since it was almost dark and with a barking dog in the dark our neighbors might eventually call the dog shelter people we'd visited earlier in the day. (Vincent got mad and siad he'd stay at his girlfriend's. I eventually picked him up after church - on Mother's Day Sunday - and by then he had finally overstayed his welcome - and that helped produce a you can only see Vincent twice a week rule for Vincent's girlfriend - which is good as far as we're concerned - but marked a big change - since he used to go over there for hours EVERY DAY. A sign of a good "ethnic" restaurant - lots of the customers there were South Asian Indian Americans (but it's hard to pick out since it's in a rather run-down old shopping center).

So we'd already had our big meal for Mother's Day weekend. On Mother's Day Sunday after church Stephanie walked to a plant store in our neighborhood and then I drove to pick her up with a bunch of plants she'd bought. After this, she spent a couple of hours working with them, mainly in our front yard. Frisco helped a little. (Mostly) fun weekend!

-- Perry

The Money Man

Driving through sleepy Florence, IN, minutes after Mine that Bird's miraculous victory, and turning around the bend along the river to see the towering Belterra casino (obviously a big local employer) was something of a shock. We rushed in to get tickets before the 7 p.m. show (early so people could gamble afterwards) and quickly noticed that Louisville and Jeffersonville's indoor smoking ban did not apply to some parts of Southern IN. We shifted just in time to a smallish casino concert hall. Twenty years earlier I'd seen Eddie Money (singer of late 70s hits like "Two Tickets to Paradise" and "Take Me Home Tonight" and the early 1980s MTV revolution era hits "I Wanna Go Back" and also my favorite, "Shakin'," in the famous Palladium theater. This theater - off of Union Square and scene of Club MTV - which my apartmentmate Belinda and her boyfriend danced in - for a couple of years. Although Money had been a NYC police officer before he became a rock star in the late 1970s, he and his Mr. Entertainer banter (complete with loads of mediocre jokes) seemed a tad out of place in the hip club. Although the Belterra's audience was older and spread somewhat thinly through the concert hall, he almost seemed more at ease in the casino. He talked up gambling there and had apparently played there three years earlier (when we were nearby in Louisville - this was our first trip to any of these IN casinos. I had only been in a casino some 15 years ago when I stopped in Vegas to visit with my cousin Scott and his family and they showed me around the town). (After the Grand Excursion, Stephanie and her friend Jo and two others had also been to another river casino - the one in Fort Madison, Iowa, along the Mississippi River. Stephanie had also visited a river casino boat on a trip to St. Louis with her friend Rita some 14 years ago.) I didn't really manage to get any good pictures of Eddie Money or the casino. Money performed most of his hits, a few new songs, and a Motown song from a new cover album. He talked up gifts he was selling to raise money for care for HIV-infected children. Money, 60, was backed up on vocals by his daughter, Jessi, who also sang three songs herself. His band, which I suspect had changed personnel in 20 years, was solid.

With a waitress's encouragement, we moved up closer to the front as soon as the show started. Because I didn't know if we would make it, because I wanted to avoid the Ticketmaster extra charges, and because I was told on the phone that the show was unlikely to sell out, we waited and got tickets at the box office as we arrived. But we quickly left our back-row seats (still - it was so small - there were no bad seats). But we weren't right up front and we didn't join the mainly women my age or older dancing up front - which would have positioned us to get better pictures. We chatted a little with the women who moved up near us, including one who bemoaned Money leaving out a hit from his set list.

Money periodically played saxophone in the show.

I haven't been able to find any video of this exact show on YouTube.

But here's a performance of "Shakin'" at a casino in Connecticut from the same tour - two months before we saw Money and his band: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDP3PGdP2Rc

Here, from a week after we saw him, is Money performing the 1980s hit "I Wanna Go Back." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF9XEub8mDM

By the time he'd got the crowd going more at the end, Money said: "I don't do this for the money - I do this for you." - even though he'd joked earlier about money. "I sold 37 million records, but I don't know what happend to all of that money. . . . Who knew?" he asked, suggested that he had spent like he thought he was going to keep selling millions of records forever. Speaking of money: After the concert, we walked over into the casino, which shifts effortlessly to the boat. Again, Stephanie discouraged me from taking pictures, and I got no good ones. Apparently there was a vantage point from which you can look out on the river, but we missed it. Stephanie knew some of the tricks. There were lots of slot machines and then blackjack tables, including those with $100 minimums. Early on we walked through a quiet, smoke free back room where people were playing poker, and this was kind of cool to see. I've seen much more of casinos in movies (like in "Casino Royale" and "Ocean's Eleven") than in person. This definitely wasn't Vegas or even Atlantic City, but it was interesting to see nonetheless (plus this slice of Kentuckiana broadly construed - We hadn't been able to consider taking Vincent because the whole facility is apparently age 21 and up - because of the gambling.) I wasn't tempted to try gambling - though Stephanie had tried it in Fort Madison (she broke even, she said). I joked that I didn't recognize anyone from the Creation Museum at the casino and that I definitely would not expect to see anyone from our church at either of these locales. As we walked out, some people - dressed up, including women with hats somewhat like the one that Stephanie had bought for Derby but didn't get a chance to wear - were arriving on a shuttle from Churchill Downs and the race. (I had developed a whole elaborate plan to board the dog - if we had decided not to try to go to the concert but only to the mall and the museum - but we ended up leaving late neough that I thought we'd get back in time.) As it turns out, Vincent surprised us by going back home from his girlfriend's (where he'd spent the previous night) at 8:30 p.m. and so he was there to rescue the dog (and - eventually - talk with Stephanie). We headed across the street to retrieve our car and drove off to do a little more exploring (in Vevay, Madison, and Bedford). Furthest below is video I took of Money (not his real family name, I bet) and his sax solo from "I Wanna Go Back." Click on play to watch and hear.

-- Perry

Grand Excursion

In summer 2005 towns along the upper Mississippi River replicated a series of events from 150 years early - when a flotilla of ships spent days and days traveling up the Mississippi River, from the Iowa-Illinois border - very near where I lived in 2003 and 2004 - to the Twin Cities, where we lived before that. On our way to Illinois (and then to Louisville) on a Memorial Day weekend trip to the Twin Cities five years ago - just before the "Grand Excursion" - we essentially did the Grand Concourse in reverse. We left St. Paul and stopped in Pepin, Wisconsin, to see the "Little House in the Big Woods," then drove along the Mississippi, criss-crossing between the states - stopping to go to the bathroom in Winona, MN; driving around LaClerc, Wisconsin; having dinner in Dubuque, Iowa; driving back past the Davenport (Iowa) mall (where Stephanie and Joanne had shopped a year before) - unti we arrived in Macomb very late at night. Stephanie and I thought of this trip as we sort of replicated this on the Ohio River, minutes after leaving the Creation Museum (including the petting zoo and the bridge) two weeks ago Saturday. we were in a hurry, because I wanted to try to get to a concert outside of Vevay, Indiana. So we left the museum at 5:45 p.m., took the Cincinnati beltway across the river (I'd only driven this stretch once before on my way in a rented SVU - going 30 mph in the snow - when my plane got snowed in in the Cincinnati airport - on my way back to Macomb after my Louisville job interview 5 1/2 years ago in January). (Pictured above) we quickly passed one of many coal-fired electric generating plants along the river. Indiana allows gambling on boats (mostly on the Ohio River or Lake Michigan) (some of these boats actually fake). Here's the entrance to a casino in Lawrenceburg, IN - the first town we drove through in IN (along the river).

Further into Lawrenceburg we drove across a bridge, close to a Seagram's distillery.

Yet another distillary.

One of the cuter towns we drove through was Aurora, IN, where we drove past the end of a church wedding. (For some reason there is no bridge across the river between Lawrenceburg and Vevay, IN - almost an hour away. Looking at a map with indistinct bridges, I thought there should be a bridge at Aurora or Rising Sun, and we could have driven along the river on the KY side, and then crossed at one of these two towns - but, in fact, no bridges.)

We kept driving through Rising Sun.

Below is a barge - like the barges we used to see heading up and down the Mississippi River from the Shepard-Warner expressway in St. Paul - and like the ones - in fact, this could be a Louisville-headed barge - in the Ohio River passing Louisville and Southern IN.

Around about now was 6:15 p.m., when Stephanie remembered that the Kentucky Derby race was slated to start in eight minutes. We messed around with the car radio and a transistor radio for the whole eight minutes until we finally found a station that was carrying the race, which thankfully started a little late. The station faded in and out until I eventually stopped along the side of the road - mid-race - to make sure we wouldn't lose the signal down the road. We had just 15-20 minutes to get to the casino in Florence, IN - but I thought we could afford a one-minute wait. The race was awful exciting - but it was hard to figure out on the radio what happend at the end. I've watched the race several times on YouTube - with the same announcer announcing the race on TV who was announcing it on the radio - and he doesn't mention the winning horse until basically AFTER the end. Mine that Bird was dead last through most of the race - way back - and didn't roar way into the lead - sneaking in on the rail - where he's hard to see - until the last few seconds. Afterwards, we heard a little analysis that helped explain what happened (though it was even more clear to me after watching the race on YouTube - partly to see where Mine that Bird came from). Calvin Borel rode horses to victories for the second time in two days (having rode Rachel Alexandra to victory in the Oaks race at Churchill Downs the day before).

Minutes later we drove through tiny Florence, IN (town with same name as KY town just miles away across the river where we had eaten lunch) and then suddenly saw the casino. After leaving the casino three hours later, we continued with our Ohio River version of the Grand Concourse. We drove past the bridge to KY at Vevay, through small Vevay and its open bowling alley and then down the road though the very cute Madison - scene of a fatal speedboat regatta several years ago and filled with historic homes - and drove past a famous hamburger joint I'd heard about from an admissions officer at the nearby (Presbyterian) Hanover College the day before. We made an emergency city park public restroom stop for me, and then drove across the bridge and over land towards Interstate 71, though yet a fifth county seat of the drive: Bedford, KY, county seat of Trimble County (two counties from Louisville). We'd lost Vincent on the phone (who wondered where we were) in Madison (which we hope to visit again) and then called him back as we entered Henry County near 71. Stephanie talked with him during our whole freeway trip home and told him we were about to drive into KY seconds before she opened the front door (surprising him with our sudden arrival). Great trip - but it was 11 p.m. and we were happy to see Frisco and him.

-- Perry