2:00 a.m.

That's when we pulled into the Holiday Inn Express this morning. We got up at 4:30 a.m. Sunday, and left Vero at 6:00 a.m. After a side trip thanks to a wrong turn by me, we finally made it to South Haven Christian Church to pick up the rest of our C-I-Y gang at 8:30 a.m. We then headed up I-95 for our journey. We almost made it to mile marker 298...St. Augistine...when the church van gave up the ghost. Yes, we were 150 miles from Vero Beach and stranded with 28 of us in three vehicles that could hold 19 people at best. We shuttled folks to Palm Coast, ate at Cracker Barrell and Steak-N-Shake, and sat in a Bealles' parking lot for five hours before Kevin Aldhizer, who had driven up from Vero, pronounced the van officially dead and called for a couple more vehicles to come replace the now deceased church van. It was 6:30 p.m. by the time we drove past the van being loaded on a car hauler to be towed to a local Dodge dealership for an autopsy. With now five vehciles in our caravan, we headed to our first destination on the C-I-Y trip: Spartanburg. The rest of the trip was unremarkable, but I have to say that our students and sponsors exhibited the very best in Christian behavior and attitdue during this very looooooonnnnnnnnggggggg day. Satan doesn't want us at this conference, but we are coming anyway. Time to kick to satan tail!

I'll finish out my cruise journal sometime soon, but this week I will be at the C-I-Y Summer Conference.