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| TRAVELS WITH MY DINOSAUR 05 June - 05 August 2003 |
| Tuesday 24th June. You can read about my visit to Children's Harbour on the Oxford Children's Hospital website. My first task of the morning was to call Jim Ray from Children's Harbour, to confirm transport plans for the trip out to Lake Martin. I called him at home at - what I though to be 7am. However, with all the stress of last night, I failed to notice that I had crossed into central time - one hour behind eastern standard time in Atlanta. Fortunately, Jim is an early riser and I didn't disturb him from sleep - I would have felt guilty all day if I had! Katy Richardson met me at 8am, and drove me out to the Children's Harbour campus, almost two hours to the south east of Birmingham. Katy is a lovely young lady with a delightful southern accent. She originally trained as a child life specialist, doing her internship with the day surgery team at Children's Hosital of Alabama, which I'll be visiting tomorrow. For a time afterwards, she worked outside the hospital field, but returned to Children's when the opportunity arose for her to take on the role of activities co-ordinator for the Children's Harbour family centre which is based there. Katy is enthusiastic about her work. She enjoys the opportunities the job gives her, working with children beyond the stressful environment of inpatient units. She also looks forward to visiting the lakeside campus near Alexander City, a beautiful countryside setting which provides escapism and healing opportunities for children and their families. After touring the campus, Katy, JIm and I headed to Alexander City for a late lunch, and enjoyed the oriental fair of a newly opened restaurant. The drive between Birmingham and Alex City is a gentle one, the freeways lined with some magnificent vast woods, and little traffic to speak of outside the city boundaries. Upon my return, I called the Greyhound manager, a very helpful lady named Michelle. Using my original Orlando-Daytona Beach ticket, she managed to trace the identity of the ticket agent who issued the wrong paperwork in Orlando, and arranged for the Orlando station to fax their paperwork up to Birmingham. Although she wasn't able to re-issue the pass - Birmingham isn't an issuing gateway station - she gladly issued me tickets through to New Orleans, where the pass could be re-processed. What a relief! All this took several hours, and the remainder of the evening has sped by. On the television, Hyacinth Bucket is harrassing the long suffering Richard, and I think it's time for bed as I have a packed day ahead of me tomorrow. |