We saw some beautiful country between New York and Virginia. Then, we took a load from Ashland, Virginia to Indiantown, Florida. This was our first trip that far south, and we experience quite a change in weather. In New York, the weather was so nice and cool in the mid-60s, then we got out of the truck in Indianville, and the humidity nearly knocked us down! Indianville is about 150 miles south of Orlando and about the same distance north of Miami, so we were almost on the tip of Florida. I'm not sure why this has always been such an attractive place to retire. I think the heat would be pretty oppressive if you lived here all year long. We were delivering a 1500 pound natural gas coupling for a compressor on a power plant for Florida Power and Light.

It's always hard for us to fathom these companies paying the high rates for an expedite truck to bring them one or two things. We rarely ever have a full truck load of anything, but what we're hauling is usually something they need really bad and really fast, thus the "expedite" part of what we do. We could see the huge power plant from miles away, but we delivered it to a dock in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere. It was the middle of the night, and we have begun to wonder if we'd entered the "Twilight Zone."

There was just this one little two lane road through what looked like part of the everglades. I wouldn't have been surprised if we had seen an alligator crawling across the road, but we didn't. Anyway, we got unloaded and waited to see where Panther would want us to relocate to wait for our next load. We were about 30 miles from West Palm Beach, where they have about 1 load a day on average, so I figured that would be the place. We were shocked when they offered us a paid empty move to Charleston, South Carolina. That was about 580 miles away! When they offer you an empty move, you have 30 minutes to accept it or refuse it. If you accept it, you have 24 hours to head that way. We accepted it, but since it was a Friday, we decided to take our time getting there because the weekends tend to be slow anyway.

We headed back up the coast, past Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, Cocoa Beach and were about 60 miles east of Orlando when they offered us a load from just outside Orlando to Louisville, Kentucky. We were relieved because Florida is not an easy place to get a load out of, and it sure beat an empty move to Charleston where we'd have to wait on our next load offer anyway. This particular offer was for a load taking a couple of spools of fiber optic cable to AT&T. It was to be picked up on Friday, but not delivered until Monday morning. Normally, this would have been a negative, but in this case, it gave us 40 hours to deliver a load that would only take us about 15 to drive.

We picked it up and spent the night in Orlando, then spent Saturday at Disney World. I rather naively thought that the place would be less crowded this time of year but was obviously mistaken. It was swarming and very humid. We enjoyed some of the attractions, though, and even stayed for the lighted parade before heading out. I think my only mistake was combining a hotdog with a ride on Space Mountain. By the time we left, I had a mega headache and was getting nauseous. I'll spare you the rest of the details, but suffice it to say, I won't "relish" those particular memories of Disney World with any great nostalgia! I think if we end up there again, we'll opt for Epcot or a tour of Kennedy instead. Jim "hinted" at the fact that I might be getting too old for the roller coasters by saying something about my age, equilibrium, or some other nonsense! :O) Ok, I admit, he may be onto something, but I still love to ride them. The Haunted Mansion and the Pirates of the Caribbean were both fun, and we climbed all through the Swiss Family Robinson tree house. We decided we'd wait to go back when we can spoil our grandchildren (hint, hint) with the trip. That is, assuming we can still walk when we get grandchildren. :)

Now, we're driving through Atlanta on our way to Louisville. We should be there by 11pm or so and don't need to deliver this load until 9am, so we've been taking our time on the way. I hope you are all well and that we'll see you soon, especially with the holidays just around the corner. You're all in our prayers. Please keep us in yours. Love, Jim and Sandy