My Last "Big Run"

     Wednesday was Grant's day.  He headed to college with Mom & Dad in tow.  We left our home in Pennsylvania at 10 AM for a 2:30 check-in at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.  After a 4 hour 20 minute drive, we arrived at our destination.  By 4:15 PM we had Grant settled in, and he was anxious for Mom & Dad to depart.  On the drive up to Rochester I kept thinking about Hurricane Earl.  Although Earl was projected to graze North Carolina and continue to sweep on a Northeasterly course, a deviation of  50 or 100 miles to the west would have brought high winds, heavy seas and storm surge to the Chesapeake Bay.   After we left Grant, we drove for about 2 hours until we found a restaurant where we could relax and browse the internet with our air card.  As we waited for dinner, I surfed the National Hurricane Center's website for updates.  It probably only took me 5 minutes to decide that we would continue onto the boat to secure everything just in case.  It was 12:30 AM Thursday morning when we arrived at the boat.  We stayed the night and the next morning made our preparations for Earl.  It was a "damn if you do and damned if you don't" situation.  We drove back to Pennsylvania on Thursday which was another 3 1/2 hour drive.  Earl never made his presence on the bay.  I love to drive and will soon be selling our last vehicle, we drove in excess of 12 hours on Wednesday and I estimated it was about 500 miles.  I guess you could say it was my last "big run" behind the wheel of a vehicle.