Friday August 8

On the morning of our departure a huge crowd gathered in our front yard.  Breakfast was catered.  Even though there are no tall buildings somehow ticker tape fell from the sky.  Perhaps the helicopter was the source.  People insisted on carrying our bags down the red carpet to the limo and lined our departure route holding signs to wish us well.

Since it was 6:30AM and I was tired it's possible that I'm exaggerating some of this.  For instance the helicopter may have actually just been the pounding of my headache from rushing and sleeping so little over the past few days.  I'm sure some of it happened that way though since I am typing this on my blackberry as Stuart from Pheonix Star Taxi and Limo talks to Marsha while driving the limo to the airport.  And I hear the US flags flapping just outside my window.  We seem to have lost the secret service runners though when we got on the interstate.

Let's fade out and do some sort of smoke and mirrors transition to Hartsfield ATL gate D14.  We're waiting for a different flight than the one we expected.  It's good that we got to the airport early, way early.  The 10:15 flight we were on was canceled.  Since we got here so early we were put on the 9:05.  As we went through security the TSA guy asked if we were all 4 together.  He said he didn't need to see identification for anybody under 17.  After looking at identification for Marsha and me he paused and gave Davis a funny look.  At 6'2" and nearly 220 pounds without a shave Davis doesn't look 16.  TSA man said, "Maybe I do need to see your identification.  Do you play footbal?".

Davis gets that question a lot.  He always answers honestly and patiently.  I think it's time for him to branch out from that a little.  I don't mean he should lie, just have fun with his answer.  Airport security might not be the right time for that fun, but really there are few times inappropriate for fun.  I suggested he could say, "I wanted to be a cheerleader but they didn't have a skirt in my size." A different approach he thought of was to say something completely unrelated such as, "No but I have two dogs.". We're still working on it and in fact he might try a variety of answers to see what works best.  We have plenty of time during this trip to think it over.  This is just the start of about 24 hours of travel.
Tom