My vacation started Friday night, July 2nd, with Cathy coming to pick me up at 8pm. Looking forward to a 3 hour drive to Houston, including stop time for dinner at Sonic, I settled in quite nicely to the passenger's seat. We arrived at the Sleep Inn on JFK about 11pm, checked in, parked, set down in the room, had some wine, watched Rain Man, then finally about 12:30 am, settled in for our 3 hour nap. Up at 3:45, down to the lobby at 4:15, on the shuttle 4:30ish and to the airport in less than 10 minutes, where we met the rest of our party: Warren & Keri, Penne, Nancy, Nancy, Chris, Lonnie, Donna & Lloyd, Sue & Marty, Chris, Cassandra, Marianne, and Mike & Sally.

I was able to get a window seat, so the flights were not that bad. From Houston to Charlotte, NC, I sat next to a lady who was going to a funeral for her aunt, and bringing the remains of her mom for dispension on a mountain peak. Travelling with her were her two brothers and her daughter. One of her brothers is a dive master who partook of a shipwreck excavation from a Texas river. Chris has the scoop on that one.

With an uneventful stop in Charlotte, off we were to Providenciales ('Provo') of the Turks & Caicos Islands ('TCI'). I won't even get into the obnoxious, drunk bimbos that apparently have NEVER left the state of NC and thought their screaming through the plane was cute and entertaining for all of us. Fortunately, they were subdued on the return flight the next Saturday. I almost forgot all about them. Almost! Through customs. I, of course, once again picked the LONGEEEEEEEEEST line. I lost Chris' bet that the last person through had to buy the other a beverage. I countered (after losing by a fair margin) that the last person through should be the buyee and NOT the buyer. At least my one bag made it out pretty quickly, and straightaway I went to the puddle jumper, checked in, got my bag weighed (yes, all my clothes and dive gear in one bag, under the allotted 40 pounds, and ugh, had to tell them how much I weigh!), time to hit the girls room, then off to Grand Turk. The flight is a short 21 minutes, and within the hour we were at our hotel, checked in, and down at the bar for our first tropical beverage awaiting arrival of the rest of our party.

The rest of the day consisted of our dive meeting with Dale, the owner of Oasis Divers, a BBQ dinner and a very tart key lime pie at the hotel, and for most of us, a good night's sleep.