Wofff!  -  It's Been A Long cold Winter

But now its time to kick off the 2014 Funmobile Season.  As usual, I'm a bit behind in postings.  Due to the 6 feet of snow piled out on the back deck, we decided to pull the beast out early and get the heck out of Dodge.

Of course on Feb 24, the Funmobile wasn't ready to come out of deep hibernation so we had a number of mechanical challenges to overcome, (dead battery and gummy generator carburetor).  But four days later we were ready to bug out.

The plan was to take Mom out to Arlington to be interred next to Dad on Thursday March 6.  With last year's sequester, we couldn't even start the scheduling process until December.  They offered a date in March so I figured that is almost spring and I felt really bad about putting the Arlington honor guard through the ceremony on a 105F August morning like Dad's.  

The original plan was to depart Sunday morning, to arrive in Dover Delaware Monday afternoon and have dinner with a boyhood buddy I hadn't seen in over 50 years.  The a day of genealogy research at the state archives and back to DC on Wednesday morning.  However, watching the weather forecast, it looked a bit dicey for Sunday - Tuesday travel along that route.  So we decide to move departure up to Saturday to try to get ahead of the brewing storm Titan.  

Saturday morning we awoke to MORE %@^&^$# SNOW.  By 11 am we finished all of the last minute "stuff" that always MUST be done before leaving,  (i.e. vacuuming the rugs????), and headed east.

The Funmobile has never seen snow  before.  and more importantly, I'd never driven it in the snow.  Fortunately, we ran out of the snow by the time we got to Indiana and it was clear sailing the rest of the day.  We made it to just east of Cleveland by 7 pm.  And YES I did stop, begrudgingly, at least twice I think.

That (Saturday) night I was intently planning the Sunday plan.  I appeared the snow would stay a bit to the south and if we got an early start, we should be able to stay just ahead of the front. the Delaware side trip was off the table as both Delaware and DC would would be under 8" - 10" of snow by late Monday.  

If we didn't make DC by Sunday night, we might not make it at all.  So it would be straight to DC and hunker down in a hotel until Thursday.  (I'm sure Jim Helt will appreciate the financial pain of a last-minute, 3-day hotel reservation in Arlington.)

So rise and shine at the break of dawn on Sunday morning and .....  MORE %@^&^$# SNOW.  Seems the another snow front snuck in from the north where I wasn't looking.  Against my better judgement, we took off anyway.  I figured worst case was spending a few days off to the side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike until the plows got through.

The first couple of hours were spooky.  Early Sunday morning and the Turnpike is nearly empty with moderate snowfall.  If it got any worse, it could be ugly.  However, as it turned out, we shortly got out in front of the storm again and made DC by about 1 pm.  All my anxiety was for naught.

So... here we are layed in for the duration.  Tomorrow is forecasted at about 8" - 10" throughout the day.  We may take the Metro into DC and take in some sights of it's not too bad.  If not, I figured out how to hook the tablet into the big ole TV and we can stream Netflix until our eyeballs fall out.

So the RV season is off and running and as Jessica stated in an earlier email, Mom-Mom would be pleased to "go down in a storm called Titan".









Lastly - Ate dinner at an Afgan restaurant.  Food was kabobs and Afgan bread served American style (paper plates and plastic utensils).  Tasty, if not authentic.

Good Night from the Nation's Capitol and the home of Frank Underwood.

Brad & Val