The margaritas are preventing me from answering your question in the manner to which I am accustomed.

HOWEVER!


I shall return.

[/Gen George McArthur ]

Damn, when that boy moves he makes it count, don't he?

Don't worry too much, I'm betting ya done good.

:comfort:

And tell margarita hello for me. I haven't seen her in a while.

Orange things are messing up our trip.

First it was the wildfire.

Now it's the orange man here in DC.

One of the dads on the trip is a lawyer, and his biggest client just got slammed by these moronic tariffs. They have been forced to lay off something like 80% of their workforce because their only product is wire and they depend on steel imports. Virtually all their orders for wire have been canceled in the last week. Anyway, this lawyer dad has spent the past week lobbying folks on the Hill, and has to travel with a congressman to Missouri to give a tour of one of the plants the orange man shut down. This is right in the middle of our trip that he has to be babysitting a congressman. He would love to skip it but can't afford to abandon this client that is fighting for its existence.

So it turns out our van reservations were in this guys name, and with all the driving we are doing, we were really counting on having three drivers to take shifts. I think we can still pull this off with only two adults, but it's going to be much more brutal, and we may have to pay more to make new van reservations.

Fuck.

Well, shit. If it's not one thing, it's another.

Man, this is upsetting in so many ways. Is there no emergency Dad you can drag into it?

So the working plan we have now is that I rent the van. Done.

Not sure if I can add him as a driver if he isn't there in person. Maybe if I have a copy of his driver's license.

And this lawyer dad is going to fly to his important St. Louis meetings with all his backpacking gear in addition to all his lawyer shit. After the meetings he's going to the airport hotel, pack up, change into camper mode, and fly to Billings MT in the morning and meet us at the KOA when we arrive that afternoon. Or maybe we will pick him up in the Billings airport. I guess we'll be driving around with his big briefcase and suit/garment bag at the bottom of the pile under the camping equipment and backpacks.

So he will miss the first week of the trip, but that's the relaxing fewer miles driven part of the trip anyway.

That's awesome. I'm glad that he was able to figure out a way to make it work even with his lawyerin' obligations. Seems like everyone's really on board with making this happen for the kids no matter what, which makes success a lot easier.

Oh yeah. Right. This is for the kids. I keep forgetting. :blush:

:lol2:

Heheh...

:lol

Could he UPS his lawyer stuff to his office?

If he gives you a limited power of attorney, it's the same as him being there. Make sure you charge him an attorney's fee. :D

Started to drive pologirl to Toronto this morning to catch the flight for her two month European thing starting with 6 weeks on the dig in Greece.... border easy... then we hit traffic. serious traffic. Forced off the freeway, no explanation, no diversion posted. So we followed the trucks for a couple of hours. crawling interspersed with nothing. Roads on a grid system through flat farmland -we could see lines of trucks like hedgerows.

Found a truck stop once we realized flight was not happening. Nasty accident closed main freeway in Ontario. They let us use a phone, pologirl rebooked for tomorrow (at a cost of $1000ish)

Google maps still thinks freeway is closed.... just a tad apprehensive. Dig requires arrival on a specific day, not happening. Dig director likes pologirl though and seems ok, may even send special shuttle to airport.

still apprehensive tho

I'm sorry for your apprehension, but love the image of lines of trucks like hedge rows. I've looked at maps more than once and noticed those road grids out there and wondered if you couldn't just pick a random little farm road and drive for 50 miles in a perfectly straight line.