DF: We were planning to get up early, enjoy breakfast, and take our time packing to leave. Then Ken checked his phone and found an email from the VISA fraud alert folks, alerting us to a suspicious transaction. We spent the next two hours sorting that out–talking to VISA about not canceling the card right before the trip, but still keeping our account secure; and then fixing all of the things that autopay from the account.

We managed to hit the road only 30 minutes behind schedule. First stop was a friend’s house near Greensboro, where we left the car (for Megan to drive home after her trip). Since we were already close, we found our way to US 29. The drive was pretty, a bit slow, but mostly uneventful. We stopped for lunch in Lynchburg, and got to Mom’s house by 4:45 (after a quick stop at Norm’s for some local beer).

We spent a little more time online sorting out the financial mess, then headed to my brother’s house for dinner. We had a wonderful, relaxing evening with them and returned home to try to get some sleep.

BC:  Nasty surprise this morning — we need the credit card for travel but with fradulent activity the bank wants to close that card and send us a new one. But where to send it? We’ll be traveling for a month, and by the way we need the card to do that! Ugh. We finally settled on a “delayed closure” — the bank puts a hold on the card, and we can call when we need to use it to have the hold lifted for a few minutes until the charge goes through. (Note that this sounds much easier than it actually turns out to be in practice.)