Great Lakes, Batman!

[Tyler] You gotta love the free wireless Internet access at the Albuquerque airport. It means I can start blogging right away, even before we leave NM.

Like Rob, I woke up early this morning, thinking about the trip. The great news is neither of us has been thinking about the store. Everyone asks if we're nervous about leaving The Kumquat for five days, but there's no need to worry, when we have such great staff and volunteers.

Instead, I woke up thinking about the restaurants we'll be eating at. Tomorrow night is a dinner at Alinea. And, one night, we're planning to eat at Soul Vegetarian, a completely vegetarian, but very traditional soulfood restaurant on the south side of Chicago. Rob's also drooling over the pastry shops he's planning to visit, but I'll let him tell you about that.

The exciting news of the morning is that you almost had grilled kumquat guys. Our Great Lakes plane sprung a fuel leak on the way over the Black Range. The pilot assured us we had plenty of fuel to make it to ABQ, but I have to admit I was thinking more about what might happen if that spraying fuel caught a spark on landing. My parents once had a plane catch fire, and it was one of the scariest things they've lived through (even counting living in Zambia during the Rhodesian war). However, they did get to slide down the safety chute, which is something I've always wanted to do -- Mom says she can't remember what it felt like, because she was thinking more about the smoke and flames. Ah, well.