Chapter Two

Emily: Bill told me to start the next chapter. And truthfully I'm not sure where to go from that. I already blogged about the little things we did the rest of the weekend, so I'll jump ahead to the flight (aka epic journey) back home. It all began... hmm where do I begin?


Bill: Begin at the beginning. We went to Savannah because you went to college there and met a lot of people. Among them, the Canady's who you met at church. They had two sweet little daughters, Allison and Megan. They were the flower girls in our wedding. When we moved back to Savannah after our wedding, we attended church with them, and the girls were in the Sunday School class you and I taught together. So, even though it had been nine years since we had seen them, they were nice enough to open their lovely home to us and even introduce us to their neighbors and invite us to a party. That's where you should begin.


Emily: Bill and I decided to drive around and take photos and leave the Canady's to their afternoon preparing for graduation (yes, we went all the way there and weren't able to attend the graduation because it started at 4pm on Sunday. I never ever thought it would be on a Sunday, but it was). Bill suggested that we go out to Bonaventure cemetary to take photos. I agreed, even though I hadn't charged the camera battery and we were down to twenty minutes or so left on it.

Now, let's admit something right here. Neither of us remembered how to get there. Bill was sure he could find it by "feel" or "smell" or some sort of bloodhound scent.


Bill: I love cemetaries. I got that from my mom. Now, Bonaventure is simply the most gorgeous and peaceful place I have ever seen... well, that's filled with corpses, anyway. I used to pack a lunch and go their frequently by myself to just look over the bluff to the ICW and enjoy the centuries worth of tombstones, monliths, obelesks, mouseliums, crypts, and sarcophaguses, (sarcophagii?).


Emily: And I just knew we could find it. Rewind to the car rental counter when the man asked us if we wanted a map and we laughed at him. Now here we are laughing at that and wondering if we would actually find Bonaventure or if we would miss our plane because we would be lost wondering the marshland of Savannah...

After a couple of harrowing minutes (mostly of me screaming about turning right because Bill was pulling out into intersections far enough to see what was coming - really not a good idea to plant shrubbery on every single corner) {Bill: I WAS turning... I like to know if we are about to get creamed before I just dart out} we found it when we came to the road called, are you ready for this? Bonaventure. Duh. How could we forget that? Well we did, but we found it anyway. We drove around and took many pictures. Several of which will get printed and framed and hung in our living room.

We then headed over to Baldinos, home of the giant jersey sub (much like Jersey Mike's for those of you who are familiar with that chain). We did not eat the sandwiches there. Oh no. We took them with us to let the "soakage" happen.


Bill: For those of you not familiar with the term, (and who would be because it is made up); soakage is the process whereby you allow all the goodness of a complex sandwhich to meld together. Especially the oily bits which need time to distribute the flavors and soak into the bread... hence soakage. The first time Em told me this I almost had her committed. But, she was right. Soakage is a must.


Emily: The plan was to eat them on the plane (we ended up eating them in the airport because we were hungry). We drove around a little more before heading to the airport.

Turning in the rental car was easy. Going through security was easy. I had not heard anything about the tornadoes and there were no delays for our flights. Our plane came in from Atlanta and it was a little late (just five or ten minutes). They got it prepped for us and we boarded. And then we missed our window to take off. So we had to sit and wait to get clearance (btw, both Bill and I know more about airports/flying than the average person, we're just nerds that way). It's not a big deal to wait, because the papers all say it takes an hour to fly to Atlanta, but under no circumstances have I ever flown that flight in a full hour. Nope, it takes 32 minutes, 26 with a tail wind. So I knew that we had plenty of time (of course we also had a two hour layover for that extra cushion). Of course what I didn't know was that our pilot was also practicing to be a race car driver, once he was given clearance to take off, he still had to make the turn onto the runway and he already had the engines fired up quite a bit. Had it not been for the extremely large couple on the port side of the plane, we might have tipped over (I only make mention of the large couple because the man couldn't even buckle his seat belt nor could he stow his carry on).


Bill: Yeah, but it was landing that was the most fun. All was smooth and normal until we got onto the high speed turn off and Captain Ricky Bobby decided we were gonna slide that plane sideways right to the gate. Seriously, it was like sitting in the back of a bus and you are sure the world is ending.


Emily: It was Atlanta. Never, ever fly through Atlanta on a Sunday night. Busy does not describe that airport, runway, or terminal.

After we landed, we sat waiting to cross the runway not once, but three times. Then we got all the way over to the terminals only to be told by the pilot that our gate was in fact still occupied. He was good about updating us, and then got a bit cheeky and told us it was actually a Mexican stand-off at the gate.


Bill: Yeah. I think it was likely the only time I have had a pilot tell it like it is... "Ladies and gentlemen, I told you earlier our gate was still occupied, but actually, it is open... we just can't get to it. In fact, we have something of a Mexican standoff going on here. The ground crew is getting it all worked out and we'll be in the gate in just a couple minutes."


Emily: Finally we were at the gate and deplaning (de plane! de plane!) Several people behind us (which wasn't really that many because we were pretty far back) had connecting flights that were boarding right now! We stayed out of the way, we still had two hours.

One of our favorite acronyms is that Delta stands for: Don't Ever Leave The Airport. We created a few new ones. Delays Even Longer Through Atlanta and Dammit Emily Leave the Airport. Yeah, I just typed that.



Bill: And I made them up.


Emily: We cruised the fifteen gates down to the flight to Detroit. We stopped at the restrooms. I went first and came out with paper towel. We took a photo and sent it to the Canady's. Scott works at Georgia Pacific and his roller is the one that makes the paper towel for the Atlanta airport!! How cool is that?


Bill: That was my idea, too. I was on fire.


Emily: Bill bought Krystals (and here I thought I was done eating for the next week) and we took turns walking around. I got in a mile, in my flip flops with a blister. Not bad...


Bill: And I still have a stomach ache from the Krystals. But we made it home after leaving late from Atlanta. In fact, 45 minutes late. and we arrived in Detroit 3 minutes late. We were hauling the mail for sure. Of course, this was the flight where we were sitting right next to the engines, back in the steerage section with the rest of the poor.

We couldn't believe we saw the lights of Cleveland before I even drained my second cup of coffee and second back of peanuts, (I think the flight attendant had a crush on me... he was very nice). Air travel suddenly started making sense.

And that was essentially our trip to Savannah. I guess. In a nutshell.