Well, we finally took something of a real vacation over the Thanksgiving holiday. One thing I’ve never really mastered is the “relaxing” portion of a vacation – I usually need a vacation from my vacation. This trip was no exception.

I should mention that I am writing this from sunny Chicago where the current temperature is 9F. I thought I was done for the year but last week and emergency request came in and I found myself on the plane again. And what really sucks is that my plane karma for any trips to Chicago seems to be poor. My flight home last time I was here was cancelled and I lost a day getting home, and this flight was delayed for an hour and a half. Anyway …

Andrea’s dad has a beach house (called The Scallop) on the Gulf of Mexico at a place called Alligator Point which is about an hour south of Tallahassee, Florida. It’s a nice place to visit, as constant hurricanes have moved the beach in about 100 yards and with the exception of the road they are rebuilding in front of it, it is beachfront property. We’d probably visit more often, but it takes about 12 hours to get there by car and that makes it hard for a long weekend getaway.

Andrea’s brother Charles lives down there as well, and we decided to visit for Thanksgiving. The plan was to head to Monroe on Wednesday, pick up Andrea’s mom, Leona, and drive down during the day.

However, Tuesday night we saw some heavy rain (about 4 inches at the farm) and we even lost power for a couple of hours. It was supposed to end on Wednesday, so we decided to postpone the trip until Wednesday night in hopes that we could be a little more comfortable about leaving the farm. Plus, by driving through the night we hoped to miss the worst of the traffic.

We made it to Monroe about 8pm, picked up Leona and left for Florida around 10pm. Andrea took the first shift and drove into South Carlina to Columbia, turned right and headed toward Augusta, Georgia. I woke up when we stopped for gas. The BP station was selling the first “2007 ready” diesel fuel I had seen. In 2007 there is a requirement to lower the sulfur content in diesel fuel. The US gets most of its diesel from Venezuela (versus the Middle East in Europe) and it contains more sulfur. The US is requiring a cleaner burning fuel, and that’s why VW isn’t offering diesel cars any more (although Mercedes is, at a starting price of US$52K). Anyway, I’m not sure if it was the fuel, the driving conditions, the load on the car, whatever, but we managed 717.5 miles on that tank, nearly 60 mpg. We’re used to 50 mpg on trips, but that was really amazing.

[Note: It is now five days since I started this post and I am writing this on the plane back to Raleigh. I always have grand plans for catching up on my writing when I travel, but after 10 hours with the client and another 3-4 hours working on, well, work, it’s hard to find the energy]

We met Charles (Andrea’s brother) and a friend of his named Stewart when we arrived. Stewart is retired from the army and spends his weekends jumping out of planes. This is when the seed got planted about us possibly jumping out of planes. The other option was to go salt water fishing. But I digress.

I started brining the turkey and then took a much needed nap. Although the kitchen of the Scallop is small, we managed to cook a pretty good Thanksgiving dinner. We then played games until it was time to go to bed.

On Friday Andrea’s father Richard drove down from Tallahassee (well, Quincey, which is right outside of Tallahassee). We visited for a couple of hours, had some turkey sandwiches, and played some more games.

After Richard left we decided to go walking along the beach. Alligator Point is, of course, a point, and the end of it is a protected bird habitat. Since it was past nesting season we were able to walk in the habitat and look for shells. It is hard to find a place to park on that end of the point, but the hurricanes of a couple of years ago had taken out a few homes and we were able to park on what used to be someone’s entryway.

When we got back to the Scallop Stewart had left but he had made some shrimp for us. He was supposed to check the availability for us to go skydiving but we wouldn’t know until Saturday morning when we drove over the bridge and could get phone service. We wanted to leave on Sunday so the option was to do something on Saturday or first thing Sunday morning. Leona, Andrea’s mom, made the final decision for skydiving over fishing, stating that the opportunity doesn’t come around all that often.

Saturday morning was another beautiful day. We decided to visit Richard at the airport in Quincy, which is also where the School of Human Flight (where Stewart works) is located. He rents a hanger there for all of this toys, and he let me ride one of them – a highly modified 1948 Harley Davidson.

That is a Chevy 350 V-8 on the heavily modified trike. It corners like a pig but screams on the straightaway. I ended up having to give rides.

As the day was ending we were told that the three of us, Andrea, Leona and myself, could make the last jump of the day, so it was a whirlwind of filling out paperwork (disclaimers, mainly), and getting into our cool sky diving attire.

Basically, you hop into the airplane and straddle one of the two long benches, with your tandem partner behind you. The plane takes off and heads for 14,000 feet why the guy behind you clips on a tightens a tons of straps and buckles.

When its your turn, you duck walk to the door, scrunch down (so the two of you can fit out the door) and then pretty much fall out of the plane. And you keep falling.

Between 8000 and 5000 feet the chute will get released and then you are to float quietly down to the airport.

It was a lot of fun. They tell you a bunch of things to do, but basically you are just there for the ride. One of the things they stress is to get your knees up on landing. You kind of slide in and if you plant your feet bad things can happen, including a nasty pivot followed by a face plant. Here I demonstrate the proper technique:

It was fun, and the only downside was that Leona didn’t quite get the hang of landing. She avoided the face plant but managed to break her ankle in three places.

So, it was off to the hospital and a midnight surgery, plus an extra day in Florida before we could get her discharged. Otherwise, it was a fun holiday.