On the road to family and adventure

2010-09-07 12:17pm

It's Day 1 of my 16-day adventure that will take me to New Jersey, Connecticut and Montreal, Quebec much of that by Greyhound. Okay, so maybe adventure is a little bit of a stretch for part of the trip, as I am going to NJ to work as a nurse taking care of my Aunt Rose while her daughter is on vacation. And the CT part of the trip is to take my aunt to see my mom (her sister)...well, that actually may be an adventure as putting the two of them in the same room for any length of time will at the least provide an interesting viewing experience for my cousin Sandy and I. Hopefully it will not escalate to a volatile situation as they are both old and set in their ways. LOL!

It's now 12:23pm and I am 1 hour and 12 minutes away from pulling into the NYC Greyhound Terminal. I have a 2:20 layover in there, and need to find WiFi to fix a PayPal link on the church website. I'm hoping I won't have to stray too far to find WiFi...

Thus far the bus ride has been uneventful. I've sleep much of the way as I started out at 1:45 a.m. from Roanoke.. I've only had one transfer so far, in Richmond, VA and will have the transfer in NYC as well. Then on to Easton, PA where my cousin Sandy will pick me up at the bus station. We're currently passing an Newark Airport on the left along with signs for the Holland Tunnel. That helps me to be a little more oriented as I was pretty clueless to location up until this point.

Going to hop off now to conserve battery life for the web stuff I need to do, but it's easier to remember thoughts if the3y are freshly laid on virtual paper as they take place. Frankie and LC are with me, my faithful traveling companions who have been to 4 continents with me. Til later....

2:44 pm On a smaller bus line's bus that is an affiliate of Greyhound. They got me on a bus 2 hours earlier than my originally scheduled bus, and there's free WiFi and electrical outlets, yay! 

Just another Bird Family canoe trip

So Troy, Jed and Clint decide to go canoeing yesterday in the Roanoke River. Clint has no canoe experience, it's a two person canoe...and there are no life jackets. Well, the first time the canoe flipped, Jed's glasses got kicked off as Clint's foot creamed him in the face. Mind you, Jed's previously lost two other pairs of glasses. One in 2007 in the same river and one in 2007 in the Everglades in Blackwater Creek. He still hasn't learned to wear a sports strap on them when he's around water...

The canoe ended up flipping two more times. The third time they flipped it, everything went sailing out. Clint tried to retrieve my Nalgene that they'd borrowed, but he got into trouble when he stepped into a deep hole. For some reason he'd been carrying a coil of rope that he'd retrieved from the water. As he bobbed up and down yelling for help he tossed the coil of rope...down stream. Moments later he managed to make he managed to flounder to shore. That left Troy to retrieve the rope and the Nalgene which by this time had drifted out of the main current into an eddy.

Unfortunately there were some "over-the-head" spots between Troy and the eddy, but with paddle in hand he managed to swim over to the shallower area. But then there was the submerged tree...After grabbing the wayward rope, Troy took a step and his foot jammed in between some roots.

The current there was swifter and twisted him around, causing the leg to lodge in the roots. Then the rope got tangled around his arm and leg, and...still clutching the Nalgene and the paddle he got pulled under. At this point he was certain he was going to die. And it was a distinct possibility but for God.

Somehow he managed to free himself and by that time Jed and Clint had gotten the canoe upright and paddled down to Troy. Troy tossed everything into the canoe and hung on the back of it until they got it to a flat area along the walking trail. Once on shore they discovered that my Dry Bag hadn't kept Troy's phone dry...

A seriously bruised and bleeding Troy turned to Clint and said that it wasn't usually like that and hoped this trip hadn't scared him from going canoeing again. Clint sincerely and enthusiastically replied, "Heck no! I definitely wanna go canoeing with you guys again!" ...Just a normal Bird Family Adventure! Now if Jed would quit losing his glasses in the river!