Sometime in the middle of the night, there was a knock on the boat. Roy heard it and got up, but I was off on planet nine. Yep, it was Lloyd. The train had only gone as far as Richmond; they'd brought him to Newport News by bus and then by shuttle bus to Norfolk. He'd taken a cab out to the marina and somehow managed to find the boat. The bag he'd checked had gone to Charlottesville, North Carolina.
I phoned the company that recertifies life rafts and found out the turn-around time is two weeks! So we borrowed Mrs. Cobb's car and took the life raft over there this morning. Also took the large fire extinguisher for refilling, but they said it was too worn to be refilled, so we had to buy a new one. Roy talked them into doing the life raft in one week. He noticed they do hydrostating of dive tanks, so we returned to the boat, got his tank and the small fire extinguisher, and took them over there. On the way back, we stopped at Moore's Building Supply and got the wood Roy needed. That was the store I was going to when I fell off my bike. I found the driveway where it happened but didn't see a hole in the pavement. No one had erected a monument to commemorate the occasion.
Lloyd made a thousand phone calls to AMTRAK to find out what was happening with his bag. Mostly, he got recordings, but eventually he got to talk with a couple of human beings. They told him the shuttle bus would take his bag to Howard Johnson's at 9:20 tonight, and he should be sure he was there on time to get it.
We ate an early supper and then caught the 7:30 bus downtown. It got us there nearly an hour early, but the next bus would have gotten us there ten minutes late. We went up to the lobby of Howard Johnson's and found out where the AMTRAK bus would stop. Then we sat on the overstuffed chairs and waited. I was so comfortable, I nearly fell asleep.
At nine o'clock, we went outside and waited. 9:15 came and went, 9:20 came and went, 9:30 came and went. No sign of the shuttle bus. Our return bus went by at 9:40, but there was no point in our returning without the bag. Lloyd phoned AMTRAK to see if he could find out anything. After several minutes of recordings, he had just gotten to talk to a human when the bus arrived. Hooray, hooray, his bag was on it! What a relief! Not wanting to hang around for the 10:40 bus, we took a cab back and beat the 9:40 bus by a country mile.
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