Thursday and Early Friday

I have always believed that when things begin to go terribly wrong prior to a trip or adventure of this magnitude that God must have some WONDERFUL things in store for us, because satan chooses things like those that happened today to thwart our plans by any means necessary. With that in mind, the Lord must have some unbelievable gifts awaiting us on this journey - because whatever could go wrong today, DID.
Kris and I awoke at 3am and began what we thought would be a liesurely morning before Erin took us to meet the bus at 5:15. But at 4:30, Mary Elizabeth called me and informed us that the bus was not in O.S. She called the scheduled driver (Hotard had given us the number yesterday), who said he knew NOTHING about a trip today, nor had any paperwork to show one, for that matter. Mary Elizabeth asked me to call Rudy Hulett, our Hotard sales manager. I told her that I would, but that I thought we ought to go ahead and plan for a massive carpool over to New Orleans, with every intention of presenting our long-term parking receipts to Hotard for reimbursement (she agreed). So, I proceeded to call Rudy. I only got his voicemail, but he called back in a couple of minutes, and sounded devastated over the gross error on their part. He kept saying, "David, I'm SO sorry...I am SO sorry...I don't know WHAT happened." I told him that these things do happen, but all that was a moot point by now, and that we simply had to get ourselves to New Orleans. I informed him that we intended to present our receipts and mileage to Hotard and expected a full refund of the booking cost plus our own expenses. He readily agreed, and again apologized profusely for the error.
We all met at the McDonald's at the Cowan-Lorraine exit, and grouped-up to carpool. Martha and George, who had to withdraw from the trip due to George's health, were extremely sweet and had brown-bag breakfasts prepared for us to take which Mary Elizabeth distributed to all of us. We quickly divided-up, and some of us set off to do last-minute preparations before hitting I-10 (get gas, swap cars at home, etc.). We set off for New Orleans car-by-car, and battled a couple of horendous downpours en route, but made it to the airport in good time.
Everyone got checked-in fine with the exception of Lind Joffrion. Somehow, her reservation got accidentally cancelled by Encore! To make a long story somewhat shorter, Mary Elizabeth had to get Encore on the phone, and have them scramble to issue Linda new E-tickets so that we could get her onboard with us. Fortunately, they did and we got to the gate with a good bit of time to spare. WHEW! We were then off to Atlanta, then Greece.
From Atlanta, our flight to Athens began with a slight delay while the crew adjusted flight plans, took care of an ill passenger, and other issues. We took off about 30 minutes late, but the rest of the flight went well. We were comfortable (as one can be in coach for an 11-hour flight), ate good food, and actually got some good sleep (me more than Kris). We have arrived, and just checked-in to the hotel. It is 2:00 p.m., and we're about to head out to the great city of ATHENS for our first sight-seeing. We cannot wait!