Dallas Texas ... February 2008

During Marcia’s February break, we flew to Dallas, Texas to visit David’s cousins. This was Miranda's last semester at Albany College of Pharmacy. We drove there, met her, and she dropped us off at the airport and took care of our car while we were gone. We flew to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport through Cleveland.

We had a rental car waiting and set off for Mesquite, a suburb of Dallas. Sally, David’s only known second cousin lives there with her 103 year-old mother, Ruth Knutty. Click here to read David's genealogical ramblings about having only one second cousin.

It had been several years since we have seen Sally and Ruth and probably close to 40 years since David had seen Sally's son, Rick. Marcia had never met Rick. We were not tremendously close as kids, so this was really the first time David and Rick met as adults. We had a great time visiting and getting reacquainted and thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent together.

We also got to see some of the sites of the Dallas area like the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. This is the museum at the former Texas School Book Depository Building, now known as the Dallas County Administration Building, the JFK assassination site. We also toured the grounds at the Dallas South Fork Ranch. Rick is a landscape architect with the city of Dallas, and although he couldn't accompany us, he gave us all the advice and directions we needed.

As fate would have it weather in the northeast was not good on the morning of Friday the 22nd, when we were scheduled to fly out. As we arrived at the airport at 5 AM, we were greeted by signs telling us that our flight to Cleveland was cancelled. We were told that we could get a flight out the next morning. We graciously informed the personnel there that this was not a favorable option and after a few phone calls and pleasant conversations with supervisors, we were scheduled to fly out a few hours later through Atlanta.

When we reached our gate and discussed our flight with an agent there, she muttered something about what was wrong with the personnel at the front counter. Within a few minutes we were at a different gate and within an hour or so, we were on a flight to JFK. Fortunately, Delta puts there capable people at the gates and only promotes the less informed to supervisory positions! We were in New York City by 11:30 or so and scheduled on a flight to Albany at 1. The weather took another bad turn, however, and we never left JFK until after 4. We actually were fortunate because ours was only one of four that left JFK that day. We were back in our car with Miranda by 5:30. The trip to our car was quite quick because we didn't have to carry our luggage. They had lost that, along with the luggage of everyone on this flight. It was delivered to our home Sunday morning, completely intact.

This was Miranda's 23rd birthday. We had planned on eating lunch with her and then heading home but due to the delays, we had dinner instead. After taking her back to her apartment, we headed north, arriving back in Edwards around midnight.