Just after dawn on September 11th, 2001, I flew out of Dulles Airport less than an hour before the departure from the same airport of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon later that morning. When I arrived in Norfolk, Virginia, to give a speech, the North Tower of the World Trade Center had been hit. By the end of my remarks, both the North and South Towers stood shrouded in smoke and flames with many desperate people jumping to their deaths, some 90 stories below. I spent much of the rest of that horrible day trying to get back to Washington to assist the President in my role as White House Counsel.

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.

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Oh, the challenges of retirement in the 21st Century. We have blotched the blog and are trying to figure out how to make this work. This is a test.

We arrived in southwest Florida on Tuesday afternoon. Down to shirt sleeves. Our journey was a success, but carrying all our possessions including one car with our RV was a challenge. At least we did not try to drive out while still connected to anything.

We drove through a storm in Carolina, but the cold front followed us here. The temperature fell to 50 this morning. We wore a jacket to Caloosahatchee Bay and watched dozens of species of shore and water birds on the mud flats this morning. Yesterday at lunch we gazed at three eagles circling above.

We're on I-95 before dawn. Went to bed at 7 p.m. yesterday, but it was not a short day. We rose at 6:30 a.m., slept in the motor home in our neighbor's driveway. Our tasks were to continue to pack and assemble the Birdmobile, finish emptying and cleaning the house, one last shower, and look at the home where we lived for 23 years. Even empty it looked beautiful. We had to go to storage to leave the last few items that we didn't want to take on our journey. While I finished arranging things in the motor home, Chuck loaded our little Ford Focus with our backpacks and camping gear. Then the bikes went on the rear and the canoe on the top. As we finished, Gen Ray drove by and I called my new friend, Vicky Jones. They watched and helped us hitch the Focus to the Birdmobile. Glen took photos of us fully loaded in front of Springettsbury Aven. and with she and Vicky waving us off, we got on the road by 10:15 a.m.

So things have really calmed down here. There's a lot less rushing to lectures and assessments and a lot more just fitting in the exercise we need to do. The day is still long and filled amazingly. For example, today I woke up at 7:30 in order to grab breakfast just before 8 and bring it to a class in the Back Dining Room or BDR. The class was about the importance of strength training while losing weight. It highlighted how it is impossible not to lose some muscle mass and impossible to gain muscle mass while losing weight so strength training is extra important in order to just maintain one's muscle as much as possible. whew.

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We are finally on the road! It took us awhile to get off this am, but with the help of a couple of neighbors got hooked up and finally left at 10:30am. After a final walk through at our beautiful Springettsbury Ave home, we kissed and said good-bye to nearly 30 years in York and 23 in this home. Here we raised our youth and lived. Now we're starting the next stage. It's exciting and scary at the same time. The Maryland State Welcome Center has wi-fi so we're sending greetings to you all. Love, Anne and Chuck