After waking up well before dawn, we peeled ourselves from the comfort of the bed and poured ourselves into the truck for the trip.  Claire was quietly sleeping while I drove through the early morning pre-dawn toward LA.  The day before Donna and I put together a playlist for trip and I needed to make a couple CDs.  When I was done I had over 100 songs and could not figure out how to chunk them all down.  I decided to burn songs in alphabetical order, so somewhere along the trip I get to listen to “Here I go Again” and “I Wanna Rock” right after one another as I drive east on 80 miles an hour.

The Czech Republic has red and white tanks, which probably explains why they’re not a world super power.  This tank and others lined the fenced-in yard outside of the Patton Museum in the middle of the desert near where we stopped for breakfast.  After two cups of sludge coffee, I drove the last leg of the trip to Glendale, CA.

The highways of California make PA’s feel like driving on glass.  About 45 minutes from Kim’s apartment, we thought we had blown a tire.  The truck was jumping all over the road and bouncing like an earthquake had hit under the chassis.  After pulling over and checking the tires while semi’s whipped around me at 80-90 miles an hour, we discovered that it was just the road and we should proceed with jackrabbit caution.

We’ve not seen Esther in four years and that was nice.  We drove to Disney for a tour of where Kimmy works in Circle 7; we viewed ping pong tables, free arcades, free Coke machines and tons of cubicles linked together and decorated with whatever element of creativity the possessor deemed fit from Death Star pez dispensers to photos of children to lamps adding ambience lighting as if the worker were sitting on his own couch.

That evening we sat around their granite dinner table and Claire, from between our legs, looked up and shouted “BOB!” in the perfect little baby voice with a hint of Chicago accent.  Now I don’t know anyone named Bob and I only know one person from Chicago.  So now every time Donna asks Claire who I am, she looks at me and says “Bob!”  I am still trying to figure out who this Bob character is and tomorrow I am interrogating the mailman.