Our day started out pretty normal. We left the house a little later than we originally planned. Made a few stops before leaving town: delivered veggies from our garden to our neighbor, mailed a birthday card (ahead of schedule – Does Hallmark have those kinds of cards?), stopped at the bank once more and then we were off. Hit trouble near mile marker 61 on I-95. A tire blew out, in the fast lane, couldn't pull over and had to change it in the emergency shoulder near the concrete medium. Gary did this in record time. I called 911 for assistance and we ended up completing the task before the state trooper arrived (never saw him so I called and cancelled my request for assistance). Back on the road again and saw a terrible car accident on the north side of Richmond and alerted our other companions to possibly avoid that stretch of I-95.

Finally arrived at the hotel in Herndon, VA and the shuttle to the Dulles Airport was just leaving – what perfect timing! It is now shortly after 1 pm and the rest of the group is about 40 minutes behind us so we decided to grab lunch at the restaurant next to our check in station (after all we are on vacation so I have to ignore the prices once in a while) . I ordered a beer with my lunch (remember we had to change a tire in the fast emergency lane!) and the waitress carded me. I am loving this trip!!! We sat near the TV so we were able to see some of the Women's Soccer Semi-Finals. It was a noisy group cheering on the girls!

The Air France airbus was wonderful!!! We each had our own TV screen with tons(!) of selections, however, I never did figure out the remote control for the games. I watched The King's Speech and enjoyed that. Then, I tried to get a little sleep. A 6 hour flight seemed like a piece of cake compared to China. We had cameras on the outside of the plane so we were able to see the sunrise from the air. Awesome!

Goodbye America...Bonjour Paris...Grub Gott Austria!