low_delta

First, the synopsis:
Rushed home from work on wednesday, jumped in the car and left. Drove six and a half hours to the south end of Indiana. Left by 8 AM and drove four hours to Cookeville Tennessee. Funeral. Went out to eat with relatives. Drove an hour and a half to Nashville. Hung out at cousin Ronnie's. Left at 9:30 AM. Stopped at Mammoth Cave for a couple of hours. Drove home. Got back at 11:30.

Here's the long version:
I drove my mother down to Tennessee to her sister in law's funeral. Emily was diagnosed with cancer back in March. She was doing well after chemo, but suddenly took a turn for the worse, and died three weeks later. Uncle Gene wasn't doing very well, and didn't call with funeral details, so everyone had to look it up on the internet.

The trip down through Chicago and Indiana was uneventful. Thursday morning's trip through some back roads of Kentucky and Tennessee was nice. I love those roads. Twisting and turning and hilly. Smooth pavement. Went along the Cumberland River for a bit. It's interesting how quickly the scenery changes when you cross the border. Kentucky is rolling hills with farms and trees. Tennesee is mountainous with mostly forests. A lot of road cuts with stone cliffs.

The funeral was short and dull. The standard funeral home speech. Nobody from the family got up to speak. Gene's three sons were there. I had only met them once, and that was about twenty years ago. Tony was the closest to my age. Greg was the middle one. Quiet, reserved, but friendly. Jeff, the oldest, struck me as one of those type A people - friendly, funny, talkative, charismatic, but he had that same shyness as the others. He never quite looked you in the eye. Uncle Cecil brought his daughter and son in law, Linda and Mark. Mark was the only other liberal in the place. At dinner, he and I were "discussing" politics with Mike. My mom's nephew Mike came up from Florida to stay with his brother and sister in law, Ronnie and Sharee. I like those two brothers. They're fun. I was rather disappointed to hear how conservative they are. Mike is pro-war, as in, "we should invade Iran next, and then Syria, because you never know what those ragheads will do next."

After dinner we said goodbye to most of the group and drove to Nashville. Mom and I stayed the night at Ronnie's. That was nice. It was fun listening to Ronnie and Mike's stories - at least for a while. I was ready to leave bright and early, but we stuck around for a while anyway.

Then we drove up to Mammoth Cave. We took the two-hour Historic Tour. Aside from the very noisy very young kids (echoey caverns), and that guy who smelled bad, whom we always seemd to end up behind, it was fun.

In northern Kentucky, we ran into a nasty storm. The wind slowed me down first, which was fortunate, since the rain had slowed everyone down to a crawl. I was going about 25 mph, along with everyone else. Mom wanted me to pull over, but I refused. I didn't want to be stopped on the freeway in a low visibility situation. I was fairly confident in my ability to stop in time if something suddenly appeared in front of me.

We made it from Mammoth Cave all the way home with only one stop for gas and food. The only time we hit bad traffic was on the Skyway in Chicago. Northbound was down to only one lane. It took us forty five minutes to go less than three miles. It was awful.

I got home a little after 11:30 PM. That was a very long day. Yesterday, I didn't do anything. I slept late, sort-of got caught up on my friends page and sat around. Then went to see Radiohead. More on that later, if I feel like it.