On the ground at LibertyCon

Miss D. and I spent Thursday morning taking care of some business matters in Nashville.  We took the time to stop in at a Publix supermarket we used to frequent when we lived there, and stock up on a few goodies.  (Publix has a nice range of house-branded sodas sweetened with sucralose, rather than aspartame.  I find the former tastes much nicer and more natural than the latter - I can't figure out why more companies haven't switched to it.  Since we can't get most sucralose-sweetened sodas where we now live, for reasons best known to the manufacturers and distributors, we took advantage of our presence in Tennessee to stock up on a few boxes of the 'good stuff', to take back with us.  Now, how can I persuade Publix to open up a branch in northern Texas, within driving distance of our home?)

We arrived safely in Chattanooga late yesterday afternoon, after a very unpleasant drive from Nashville.  The first part was fine, but about 30 miles outside Chattanooga traffic ground to a halt.  From there on, what should have been a 20-minute run turned into almost 2 hours of stop-start progress (mostly stop).  I've no idea what went wrong, but according to Google Maps, there were multiple accidents, construction zones, and the normal congestion that occurs whenever two Interstate highways merge, plus (later) rush-hour traffic in Chattanooga itself.  The combination was very frustrating.  (We weren't the only ones to suffer it.  Many other con-goers had also decided to arrive a day early, and we heard similar complaints last night from more than a few of them.)

This morning is free for socializing, and the convention program gets moving this afternoon.  I'm probably going to be run off my feet for the weekend, so I'll try to schedule posts for the rest of the day, to keep you entertained.  Say a prayer or three for the majority of the con-goers, who haven't arrived yet, and are likely to hit the same traffic issues that delayed us yesterday.

Peter