Winter Tour 2009: The drive to Atlanta GA, and Christmas!

As mentioned before, the Winter Tour had many beginnings.

December 24th was another one of them. In a way the Tour started for real on this day, what with the guys picking up the 15-seater van (minus the 4 back seats to make way for our bags!) that was going to be the main transportation vehicle (in addition to a car from Bloomington-Normal IL), loading us all up, and heading off towards Atlanta GA via Columbus IN to pick up another three participants.

It was a long and tiring 500+ mile, 8.5+ hour drive.

Once we reached the house of Ruchi and Shail, however, we felt much better! They greeted us with hugs and smiles, and food and drink, and all was right in the world. We distributed ourselves among the available rooms, and settled in to an exhausted sleep.

The next day was Christmas!

It was also a slow start to the day - perhaps because it was the first day of "camping-out", we were all groggily trying to figure out how to share a limited number of bathrooms with a large number of people! A morning meditation was held for those who were awake, followed by a simple breakfast of eggs, toast and of course, chai.

We also had two new additions to the Tour participants who arrived from Minnesota and DC.

Time slipped away from us that day, but we finally got everyone together in the mid-afternoon, dressed to the nines, and made our way to Aunty Ruby's house for the Christmas celebrations. There was amazing food, a fantastic puja, and even a Santa Claus who graced us with his presence (and presents!).

It was with great reluctance that we left Aunty Ruby's place, gift exchange presents in hand and warmth in our hearts, but the Tour would start in earnest the next day, and we needed our rest.

Georgia state image credit: MS Office clip art