Yesterday was a very long day. 23.5 hours from start to finish to be exact.

I traveled to Dubuque, Iowa with Eric, a close friend and co-worker of mine. It had been awhile since I traveled with Eric. A few years back, we traveled together quite often. It's always a blast. He is a very "real" person and he makes me laugh ... a lot. I have known Eric since sixth grade. There's been a lot of laughing since then. He's by nature sort of a quiet guy but he's this huge observer of other people ... through those observations, he has many great stories to share. Kind of whimsical anecdotal fun stuff. I learned on this trip that he will ask people questions he already knows the answer to, just in order to make conversation. That is a pretty neat quality. Most of us won't do that.

One thing that has been really cool the past year is to see Eric become a dad. He's more than a dad, though -- he's a real "daddy" to the baby girl that he and his wife were blessed with last June. I am not sure I have ever seen a dad light up quite the way he does when he talks about his kid. Eric and his wife are wonderful parents. Their daughter is very blessed.

Anyway ... 23.5 hours yesterday. Woke up at 3 a.m. and went to pick up Eric. Drove to Columbus and caught a flight to Dubuque through O'Hare. The Dubuque Airport is very small. You pretty much step off of the plane and into the parking lot. Reminded me of the TV show "Wings". Including the lunch counter and the cast of very nice but a tiny bit quirky characters. They only have a few flights in and out each day -- all to Chicago.

We spent a couple of hours meeting with a friend of mine in Dubuque and visiting his plant there. Very cool. He has put together a nice operation in many respects.

He then dropped us off at the sirport ... several hours early for our flight but he had to drive to Cedar Rapids to catch a flight himself.

We were there maybe an hour or so when the power went off at the airport. Funny thing when the power goes off at the Dubuque airport -- there's really no one there to talk to about it.

However, eventually we did engage workers from American Airlines and Avis in conversation and through that we decided that we would rent a car and drive to Chicago and try to catch our connecting flight back to Columbus. We knew we would be very tight on time but, with the power out in Dubuque and a lot of bad weather in the area, we decided that would be the best thing to do.

As we were deciding this, a young lady came up to the counter with a similar predicament. She badly needed to get to San Diego that evening because the next day she was scheduled to run in a charity marathon -- something she'd been working toward, planning for, and raising money for for several months. If something happened and she didn't get to Chicago in time for her San Diego flight, she would end up missing the marathon.

So she took off in a rental car with two guys from Ohio who she didn't even know the names of. We thought it was pretty brave of her to do that. That was probably our ego talking though. I suspect that her call home later went something like this. "I ended up riding to Chicago with two guys who reminded me a lot of grandpa. Except one of them had less hair than grandpa."

Anyway, it was a long ride to Chicago. We got there just about 15 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave. We didn't have time to gas the car so we paid Avis $6.99 per gallon to do it for us. I had been able to do some checking on the way and determined that our flight to Columbus was actually running late so that was in our favor.

The other interesting thing is that the plane we were to be on to Columbus was the plane for the flight we were supposed to have been on from Dubuque. We actually knew this before we left Dubuque but the concern was that that plane was never going to make it to Dubuqe in the first place.

So, we got there and said good-bye to our young San Diego-bound friend. I am pretty sure she said "See ya later, gramps" to me. She should have been fine for getting to her marathon and I hope it goes well.

We then waited more than three hours for our flight to Columbus. I was eating to stay awake. The marathoner would have definitely missed her San Diego flight had she stayed in Dubuque although we, oddly enough, would have been just fine.

Arrived home at 2:30 a.m. and went to bed.