Getting there is half the fun.

Members of the Adult ASP team met in the church park lot early Saturday morning. We had heard that the center in Brenton, WV was expected a fast moving snow storm on Sunday. The center director had asked John to delay coming to the center until Monday. We decided to go ahead on Saturday so we would not be driving on Sunday during the snow storm -- we would later find out it was a wide decision. Nine members left in the three trucks, Paul’s, John’s, and John’s. Ted and Jane would follow later after a Immigration Task Force meeting in Princeton. The ride to Beckley, WV (our stop for the first two nights, adjusting for the snow storm) was uneventful. On Sunday we made our trip to Walmart for some items, and sat around waiting for the snow to start. It finally started in the afternoon and we walked a short distance through the snow to the Outback for dinner. We had the usual good time at the restaurant with an excellent waitress who entered into our sense of humor. It was still snowing as we headed home.

We woke up the next morning to a beautiful snow, not a lot, but it was a wet snow and beautifully traced and covered the various shapes of the tree limbs and branches.

We left the Fair(mont)field hotel about noon and headed to Wendy’s for lunch before heading out -- we were not sure we find a place to eat at Brenton and the center director had asked to arrive around 2 or later.

We were soon on our way to Brenton and, we would find, it a very beautiful drive winding our way through the West Virginia mountains and snow/ice covered trees. We arrived in Brenton shortly after 2.

We found that we would be divided into two groups for our work here. One team consisting of the three Johns and George, the other made up of Paul, Micky, Tim, Susan, Jane and Ted.

We had a short meeting with the members of the staff, Marika, Shelby, and Jackie, sharing a bit about our selves with them and they with us, talking about the center and the work procedures and expectations and the daily schedule.

After dinner, members sat around doing a variety of things, reading, knitting, working on blogs and pictures, reading, working on puzzles, singing Beatle songs.