Melbourne, Australia

 And so we start.   Our bags are packed and ready to go.  We're standing here, inside the door.  Wait.  Not quite right.  Sigh.  There have been a number of times in the last two years when we wondered if we would ever get to this point.  We picked up the rental car yesterday from the airport in Moline.  Got to go over the new bridge (I-74 across the Mississippi) for the first time.  It is a beautiful piece of engineering and with a minimum of four lanes in each direction it should never be a traffic constriction point.  We booked an economy car and ended up with a van.  Apparently lots of those available while not so many economy are on the lot.  We leave this morning at 8 for our drive in to Chicago.  Cheaper air fare and no layovers which actually means a shorter day for us.  Since they took four filled up suitcases last week we only have carry-ons so should clear the check-in point quickly.  If all goes well we land in Miami at about 6:00 Miami time, 5:00 Central time.   We have a hotel tonight near the airport, and then we head North tomorrow to Kennedy Space Center and Orlando.  Fingers are crossed as we load up the van this morning and begin.

We have arrived at La Quinta Inn near the Miami airport after a relatively painless day of travel.  Left at 8.  Easy drive to Chicago.  Turned in the rental car and got in line to go through tsa.  They moved a group of us out of line and down to another station and we got through in about ten minutes.  Having joined the computer and power consumption world, boy did we have a lot of stuff to pull out of our bags.  Luckily we were the last people allowed through on our line so there was no push from behind as we collected all of our stuff.  Plane left on time.  Windy take off but no problem.  Got to Miami early and had to wait for a plane to leave so we had a space to park.  Collected our rental car from the cut rate agency that was off airport.  One person checking people in and if you have ever rented a car you know how long it takes.  About 30 minutes to get the two rentals in front of us.  La Quinta was four minutes away.  Checked in with ease leading to the most frustrating part of our day.  Trying to find a place for dinner.   We found that the Indian restaurant we were looking for does not exist or at least we couldn't find it.  Tried to get into the Embassy Suites parking lot but failed.  All the entrances had gates, and none of them opened.  We were not the only ones with this problem.  We went around the block a couple times, ended up going the wrong way on a couple of one way streets, and finally found our way back to La Quinta and walked to the restaurant in the Embassy Suites.  We were reminded about how expensive hotel restaurants can be.  If this is the worst thing on the worst day of travel we did ok.  Thinking about all of you in the way of the wind and storms in Iowa, but not sorry we missed this particular storm.