Well, thank God, Schuyler was a trooper! We waited until after the traffic had abated a bit, and had loaded most of the car last night and the suitcase and the rest this morning. Willow saw the suitcase and, expectedly, freaked. She starts panting and "squeaking" (my only word for the noise she makes) and Schuyler was staring at her wide-eyed. Finally the car was full and James set Wil on a towel in the front seat and Schuyler in her cage, mostly covered with her cage cover, and I were in the back seat. She was wary only about two miles, then fluffed a bit, grabbed a fruit pellet, then started to preen. We had the traffic radio on and she seemed to be calmed by the voice.

I-285 East was still a bit slow, so we went surface streets. By this time it was 9:30 and not too bad. Schuyler's eyes got very wide as I took the cage cover off.

Interestingly enough, a few minutes later a couple of people walked in with a pretty male English budgie. He chirped and Schuyler's eyes got really wide. I said to her, "Look, Skye, he's not only male, he's British!" (They're worried about him; his cere [the fleshy part around his nostrils above the beak] is darkening.)

So Schuyler was taken back in the back and poor Willow was led very reluctantly away into the back and we were on our way. We grabbed food at McDonalds—and they forgot the cream cheese for my bagel; ugh!—before we noticed the Italian deli was open, darnit. We also stopped at Smythe Books next door which has sponsored ARTC. I found a Thurber book I didn't have, Lanterns and Lances.

The GPS unit actually took us from the vet to GA400 via a route that we didn't know about, so when we asked it the fastest way to Cleveland, we followed it. The idiot thing took us east to Gainsville. The route there wasn't bad (farms) and the route from Gainsville to Cleveland was farms, but Gainsville was a stinking pain in the ass. We turned left and right and right and left; I think we saw the whole damn downtown. It was a relief to reach Cleveland and the small country store we were headed for. It supposedly had a hobby shop...well, it was a corner of the store.

In the meantime I walked down a block to see if they had something in the drugstore and found a wonderful stuffed Bernese Mountain Dog puppy. His name is Oliver. :-)

So we didn't get to the hotel until after two, but a lot of folks were in the common room, so the welcome was warm.

The laptop battery doesn't last long anymore, so I'm gonna go...

Labels: pets, travel

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 2:47:00 PM

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