September 1-3, 2001: Southern Decadence in New Orleans
	August 4, 2001: The August Birthdays
	Return to the Index for 2001

I have been working at DRT Consulting for some years now, and up until last year, business was pretty good, keeping all of us consultants quite busy. This year, however, business has declined, largely due to the ending of one major contract that we had with our sister company, Deloitte and Touche. For the last nine months or so, I've still been busy on ad hoc assignments, but the consultancy has been shrinking. Reading the handwriting on the wall, I've decided to leave DRT and return to Data Junction, the small software company that Greg and I and Darrell Blandford started in the early 1990s. It has expanded steadily although slowly, and now has a need for more training personnel, and I've gotten a position as a training consultant for them. But I won't start this job until the first of next year, and so I am going to take advantage of my time off. I'll be taking a Fall trip a bit later, but want to go to Florida at least once more this year.

This time, I want to spend a couple of weeks there, and so I've chosen a couple of weeks that span a weekend when Fred would be at his mother's house anyway and a weekend when it is his turn to cover the greenhouses. These are weekends when I wouldn't see much of him anyway.

This is going to be a small album page, even though I covered a lot of ground in the trip. I decided to make a detour to my sister's house in Elon to visit with her, so I angled up northeast from Dallas on I-30, and then took I-40 through Tennessee and across the Appalachians and right on through Greensboro onto I-85 to my Elon. I spent four days with Judy (and Ted and Jeffie who both came up for the visit) and then went east on I-85 to US 60-70 down to I-95. Then I took that all the way to Fort Lauderdale.

To return to Dallas, I drove north on I-95 and then followed the route Grant and I drove a few times and which I drove a few times in the 1990s. This takes me onto the Florida Turnpike up through Orlando and onto I-75 north. This took me up to I-10, which I took west all the way to Layfayette, Louisiana (bypassing New Orleans on I-12, one of the country's shortest Interstates between Slidell and Baton Rouge). At Layfayette, I headed north on I-49, which is not yet completed for its entire length; one has to get off and go through the city of Alexandria, Louisiana. I-49 goes to Shreveport, where I pick up I-20 west to Dallas.

I do the return trip in a single day, leaving Fort Lauderdale about five-thirty in the morning and arriving home about one in the morning the next day. It is quite a haul, and not for the faint of heart.

Since I was by myself, and have been to my sister's and to Fort Lauderdale many, many times before, I didn't concentrate on taking many pictures. In fact, I only took four pictures on the entire trip- so I'll just include them here with captions. Just click on the small image for a larger view:

My sister Judy and her son Ted at Judy's house in Elon.

Judy, her daughter Jeffie, and Ted at Judy's house. (See if you can find Jeffie.)

Ron Drew in the living room of the Fort Lauderdale condo.

Our frient Brent Whitley in Florida at his house with some ducks that call his riverfront property home.

I made it back home after about fifteen days gone, looking forward to making some trips to Austin to train for my new position.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	September 1-3, 2001: Southern Decadence in New Orleans
	August 4, 2001: The August Birthdays
	Return to the Index for 2001