Godspeed, Smile. I can almost hear that van idling from here. I am so excited for you I can hardly type. I'll have to tell the book club women tonight about your impending adventure -- and about BoomerWomenSpeak. This is a wonderful place to unwind, have fun, be silly, be serious, learn new things, get good advice, and get and give support.

You definitely need to write about some of your experiences. If I were a fiction writer, I'd want to hang out with you for a few weeks, because there is definitely a full-blown novel character there. Now I know about noodlin! Wonder why my Mississippi friends John and Mac (excerpt a few posts back) didn't tell us about noodlin! Such a tale would undoubtedly have made it from my journal into my book.

I cracked up picturing you getting all gussied up for the trip to the storm cellar. We just put our comfiest PJs on and focused mainly on having lots of good junk food to carry us through the night.

I did not know that Yahoo maps showed Internet hookup sites. My trip was before WiFi and all the other cool communication methods we have now. That's great to know. I'll check it out. I'll be interested to learn how you keep in touch while on your trip. What worked well, what didn't, etc. It's amazing what you can do today. My publisher, Angela Hoy, owner of Booklocker, has a website called www.WirelessTrips.com . She and her family take off all the time in their RV. (Their kids go to school via Internet -- they live in Maine, travel around in their RV, and get e-educated from a school in Vermont). On WirelessTrips.com, she gives tips on staying connected while on the road -- indeed, she runs several business from her RV when she's not home in Bangor.

Alas, no Spandex for this boomer for a while. But once this suspected stress fracture is healed, look out! My orthopedic surgeon once asked me how long I thought I'd be a runner. I answered by telling him I fully expect to be wearing Spandex to the grocery store well into my seventies. "That's my goal, doc, so how do we make that happen?" Now, each time I come in with some new issue, he just asks where it hurts, orders the right tests, and gets me back out there.

Dotsie -- GREAT question about fears when traveling. We've touched on safety issues, and we touched on stress issues when we discussed Smile's eye motion/ground travel theory, but the subject of travel fear is a big one. I'm going to grab some lunch and come back to it a bit later.

(I'm proud of this thread. I think we've left a wonderful trail here for later readers. A little bit of everything, from sublime to ridiculous, interesting to enlightening, potentially useful to immediately valuable. Nice job, ladies.)