On the Road Again

Hilary and I are on the road...again. This time, we have a dual-purpose trip. The first portion will take us to the boonies of New York, just north of the Catskills. Our college friend, Sara, has her parish there. Each year, a group of us college friends will get together for New Year's. So, we hauled ourselves back up to Minneapolis today, after sending Jasper back to doggie camp again. We squeezed ourselves into another tin can and took flight, this time to JFK. Why JFK, when Albany or Syracuse would be closer and less insane? I'll get there in a moment. After a nice aerial view of Manhattan, we waited around for over a half hour for our baggage to show up, then another half hour to get to our rental car. We opted to spend another $5/day to get a jetta with only 1500 miles on it. Over the next hour, we managed to battle our way about 15 miles away from the airport throught Brooklyn and the Bronx. We gave the rasperry to Yankee stadium as we passed. After that, the going was pretty easy going up I-87. We have just recently arrived at Sara's, and are looking forward to bed soon. We'll hit up the local diner tomorrow morning, then listen to Sara's Sunday sermon.

Tuesday, New Year's Day, we get to battle our way back to JFK for the second portion of our trip. We'll hop on a flight and, after a number of hours and time zones later, we'll emerge in Pisa, Italy. How has such a thing come about? The short version is that a friend of a friend of Hilary's father watches over a house in the heart of the Chianti region (no fava bean jokes, please), and wants to get away. So Hilary's dad will be caretaking for the next month, with Holly there for a long while, too. With the lodging taken care of, how could Hilary and I not take this opportunity to see Tuscany? So that's where we'll be for the week after New Year's. We'll post sporadically from Italy as we can.