The Trip Home - Christmas '08

ZERO mph on the trip from Lexington, KY to Troy, OH.   Parked in a construction zone for 4+ hours!

My favorite Christmas tree in Charleston.  This was a picture inside the tree of lights!

And another picture from far away!

The right half of the rainbow in Charleston just was I was leaving for home.

Annnnd the left half of the pretty rainbow!

Well, it's been a while!  Let's see, where shall I begin?  Finals were wrapped up with flying colors, I spent a full day cleaning and doing laundry, then hit the road for a little roadtrip back to Ohio.  I spent some wonderful quality time with my wonderful friend Shellee in Knoxville, then up to Lexington for a full day and a half.  I was able to stop into the Rupp Office to see friendly faces, then out to St. Joseph's East Hospital where Leslie was still inpatient, about to be discharged.  She and Ched welcomed their new baby boy on December 20th.  I was so thrilled to catch them before they left back to Morehead.  Micah Charles Crouse is a breathtakingly beautiful little boy with a full head of hair and adorable chubby cheeks.  I am so excited for the Crouse family that their little blessing is finally here.  What a miracle!

After a terrific day in Lexington, I went back to my house where April and the gals now live, and she and I got an awesome steak dinner at The Chop House, where I used to work years ago.  Food was great, saw some old faces from way back when, and hung with April for a while.  We went back to the house and watched a movie, and I slept on my old couch that used to be mom's, then mine, now April's.  She did a great job of decorating the house with all my holiday decorations I had left in the garage.  The house still feels like home, and I must admit I miss it a little bit.  :)

After an extremely loungey day the next day, I finally geared up to head to Ohio for Christmas.  December 23rd is a day that I am now destined not to travel on, simply because the trip always ends up being ridiculously long, one way or another.  Most of you know the Xmas travels of 2005, but this year was almost as absurd.  I left Lexington around 5 and managed to get to interstate by 5:45 or 6.  It took quite a while to get through downtown traffic, plus there was a constant drizzle and temperatures flirting around the 32-degree mark, making for potentially precarious driving conditions.  After cruising at a decent speed on interstate for 30+ minutes, the traffic began to dramatically slow down, then we were riding the breaks for a solid 20 minutes, finally coming to a complete stop.  I am usually relatively patient in bad traffic conditions, but when the "STOP" became "PARKED," then people began turning their cars off, I knew this was going to be a complete fiasco.  It turns out, the bridges crossing the Ohio river into Cincinnati were completely iced over and the police had shut down the bridges but did not give enough room for salt trucks to cross and do their job.  In the meantime, traffic was parked for 60+ miles southbound to Lexington, and I was right in the middle of the 2 cities in a construction zone.  There was no shoulder, median, or exit nearby, so the only option was to park and wait.  I watched a DVD Shellee had sent along with me until my laptop battery died halfway through the film.  Then I used every high-tech feature my blackberry has to communicate with the outside world for the next FOUR hours.  Finally, around 11pm traffic started moving again.  I pulled off at the first exit I came to and indulged in some Skyline Chili (awesome!!!), and continued home.  At about 1:30 AM, because of the crazy hours and unusual sleeping conditions the past few days, I was utterly exhausted and could not keep my eyes open.  I ended up pulling off and taking a "quick" nap in a Starbucks parking lot in West Chester (until my nap because a 3 and 1/2 hour slumber).  Finally around 4:30 or 5 AM I continued on, pulling into the driveway at dad's on Christmas eve just as he was leaving for work.  

For the record, I was in SHOCK each time I stepped out of my car.  It was 73 degrees when I left Charleston, and 25 when I reached Ohio.  Brrrr!!!