Wife/Husband Championship 2010

Wife - Husband Regatta Lake Norman, NC
Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010

About 8:30 am Facebook posting from Andy and Lisa Hayward…they’re on the road to NC! It’s a beautiful morning, starting to get cooler around here, even chilly on this morning’s walk! Wore long sleeves!
Missy and Lexi are on a sleepover at Hadley’s. Dede, Beau, and Ally each have a pup. We miss them already.

Beginning of our trip 9:10 am - leaving the house! On the radio, Ron and Ian are talking about “Johnny Negative” fan behind Ron at the Rays game yesterday. Sadly, Rays lost the first game, David Price had been doing so well! Gotta find the bats. Thank goodness for the other game - a nohitter distraction for the media.
We were hoping to caravan with A&L (Jeff and Amy left last night) but as it stands, they are a solid 2 hrs ahead--See you there!

11:20 Saw a sign on a side of the road BBQ joint that serves chicken, beef, goat, and pork. GOAT! Yikes!! I love me some BBQ, but, yeesh! Wonder how popular it is.

Via Facebook, we saw that Drew is working up a pee. Pass the bucket! I am working on some hunger, good thing we packed some snacks.
We started Nelson Demille’s Upcountry a few weeks ago and haven’t been on enough trips to finish it--back to Vietnam with Mr. Brenner.

Almost 1:00 pm, 1st gas stop just before junction with I-10 toward Jacksonville, but decided to stay on Rte 301, N to I-95. New experiences abound.
Sometimes, new experiences aren’t what they’re cracked up to be…we won’t be doing that again.

1:30 pm yay - on I-95 N
1:40 pm woo hoo - Georgia!
2:40 pm Lisa called to warn us of an incident on Hwy 26, they were instructed to take a detour and reviewed it with us.
We are reminded of the lack of rest stops in GA.
A second call from Lisa informs us that they are on the detour and they are passing where Jeff and Amy are stuck on Hwy 26. They apparently sailed into a hole and Andy and Lisa caught the first great shift (of many, they hope) of the weekend. We are investigating alternate routes. Amy and Jeff’s cell phone is out of battery, but we are able to ascertain that they have been stuck for at least 3 hours.

4:30 pm We hear an alert on the radio that the entrance ramp to Hwy 26 is closed from I-95. Unfortunately, we just passed the recommended detour exit. Turns out, the ramp wasn’t closed, but we decided not to risk it, and traveled further north on 95 and took “a scenic route” through small towns Sumter (which I thought was a county in FL) and Camden on a route called 521.

6:00 pm Andy calls, they’re drinking beer! BEER! Pretty unfair, but good for them. Lisa’s sister lives here, and they will be guarding the children for the weekend.
Dave ponders the things we do for sailing, the traveling, etc., as we pass through another interesting small town, Ridgeway.

6:23 pm Eventually, we make our way to our elusive route north, Hwy 77. We are 70 mi south of Charlotte and we successfully avoided the mishap on Hwy 26. There apparently was a HazMat incident, and the road had been closed since 9:30 am. Wonder if the Linton’s are making any progress?

7:10 pm 10 hours later - NC !! Hope Jeff and Amy are close!
7:40 pm arrive at Fairfield Inn Exit 36!!! 650 miles, we find out later that Amy and Jeff finally set up camp around 8:30 pm.