Friday, December 09, 2005

I set my alarm for 5:30AM this morning. I woke up about 10 minutes before the alarm went off. After I cleaned up and checked my e-mail, I had to strip the beds, empty the fridge, take out the trash, put all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and turn the dishwasher on (duties of departing time-share users if you don’t want to be assessed a fee).

I hit the street around 6:30AM and headed towards I-275 and Tampa. I actually made pretty good time getting out of the Tampa Bay area. It was partly overcast in the area when I departed. When I got near Ocala the sky got much darker and then it started to pour. The rain lasted until I got through Gainesville. By the time I made it to the Georgia state line , the clouds had broken up and the sun actually broke through. It remained mostly sunny the rest of the day. It was a pleasant drive.

Gas prices in the Tampa Bay area were around $2.00/gallon when I left. I purposely didn’t gas up before I left as I planned to get cheap gas in Georgia. Prices in Florida along I-75 were all around $2.30/gallon. As soon as I reached Georgia, the prices dropped to around $2.00 again. I paid $2.03/gallon outside Valdosta, GA.

I arrived in the Atlanta area around 2:00 and by-passed on the city on I-285. It really moved well- 10 MPH over the posted limit most of the way around Atlanta! I decided to gas up again between Atlanta and Chattanooga ($1.96/gallon) and catch a quick bite. I can make it easily to Louisville tomorrow (real cheap gas), which will get me beyond Chicago. I checked my gas mileage today and it was over 32 miles per gallon.

When I arrived in the Chattanooga area (just before 4PM EST) it was really cool- only 30 degrees. Once I got over the mountains outside Chattanooga, the drive was a breeze. I gained an hour in Tennessee and arrived in Murfreesboro around 4:30 CST. While I was coming in, Murfreesboro had a working fire in Engine 4’s first-due area (couldn’t understand the address- they talk funny down here). It turned out to be a kitchen fire with some extension to the attic.

I hope to get to Chicago for tomorrow night. It is supposed to snow again late in the day Saturday in Chicago with highs only around 20 degrees. Hopefully, it will be warmer on either Sunday or Monday so I can get home without having to drive through a snowstorm.

I wonder if they will ever consider extending the runways at Chicago Midway Airport, especially after last night’s incident. It was really too bad a child died in the incident. I find it hard to believe that Midway was open to landings with snow falling like last night and those extremely short runways. It will be interesting to see what the investigation comes up with. What was really strange was the fact that it was exactly 33 years ago to the day when a plane crash outside Midway Airport, killing 40+ people.

That’s it for today. I am including the rest of the photos I took yesterday with this report.

Your Roving Reporter