Day 3/4: Mason, OH

Last night and tonight have been spent in Mason, OH, a suburb of Cincinnati visiting my cousins Heather and Ravi and their two daughters Hannah and Rebekah. As luck would have it, Heather's parents, my Aunt Susan and Uncle Stuart, also happen to be visiting, coming in from Sacramento (which should be Day 9 through 11 on our trip). It's been great to see everyone again; the girls haven't started school yet and Heather took some time off, so we were able to enjoy each other's company all day today while catching up. It's been over a year since we've seen Heather, Ravi and the girls, and about nine months since I've seen my aunt and uncle (and much longer since Megan's seen them). Even though not a lot changes in 12 months time, it still seems like a long time to go in between visits.

One story that hasn't made it on to the blog yet is the story of Megan's cell phone. As we were leaving DC on Thursday, about 20 minutes after we turned in our keys and hit the road, Megan managed to drop in BlackBerry into a cup of water. She immediately pulled the sucker out, removed the battery and prayed for the best. After four days of drying (which included the use of a hair dryer and lots of sunlight), we decided that today would be the best day to see if her prayers had been answered and the phone still worked, or if we would be out a couple hundred bucks on a new phone. Luckily, about two seconds after Megan popped the battery back in, a red light came on and the phone started working. As far as we can tell, everything works just fine, so we are back to being a two cell phone enterprise.

We received another piece of good news today: my car is in good shape and she should be able to make it all the way to LA without the bumper falling off. Megan and I ran over to the local Honda dealership this morning and talked to Nick, some dude in the body shop. He came out and looked at the bumper and undercarriage and said that the bumped is still bolted to the body in a few places and that the undercarriage won't be going anywhere. Both will probably need to be replaced, along with the tip of my muffler, but that can wait until LA.

Lastly, we talked to our movers and the driver expects to be in LA on August 25, meaning that we can now officially plan the rest of our trip out. We'll be in Little Rock tomorrow night (the 17th), followed by Amarillo, Flagstaff, Vegas, Sacramento (for three nights) and show up in LA on the 24th, a day ahead of our stuff.

Mileage: 138.3 (cumulative - 864.3)
Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes (cumulative - 15 hours, 20 minutes)
Gas: $0 (cumulative - $67.14)
States visited: IN, OH