[The following blog was back-dated.]

The plan was ambitious. Leave directly after work. Deliver Alexis to a friend’s house, in a small, god-forsaken town in Tennessee. Then escape, and enjoy a nice, teenager-free weekend, something we hadn’t done since … well, since farther back than I can remember clearly.

Leaving work at the appointed time, I checked all the car’s vital fluids, topped off the tank, and appeared to collect the women. Being women, they were not ready. Much mumbling about long drives and darkness and the lateness of the hour filled the ensuing hour, and then we were on our way.

We followed the GPS, recently endowed with a sultry British voice thanks to a tip from The Merman, out of Atlanta and through the northern mountains into Tennessee. We passed through Chattanooga, climbed Monteagle and slid down the other side, and found ourselves in the Nashville area. Onward past the urban sprawl, we wound through the streets and found ourselves dropping off Alexis at the house of some nice, unsuspecting people whom we hoped would not discover what we’d left them with until we were safely away.

The drive had been a long one, and we pulled up to our hotel in Nashville with a sense of relief superimposed on a background of utter fatigue. It took hours for the relaxation to set in, the stress to fall away, but once it did, it was like the feeling one gets after running with ankle weights on. We woke the neighbors.