Despite all my efforts to the contrary, we made it to Shumen. The trip was roughly the equivalent of driving from Knoxville to Memphis without using interstates and with varying amounts of snow and ice on the roads. For the first half of the trip, we never saw the asphalt, only sanded ice and snow. It was like driving 150 miles on dirt roads. Carolyn was hating life; her back took a pretty good beating. The second half of the trip was on something akin to our numbered 2-lane US highway system, with speed zones through every town and every cautionary hazard speed an enforced speed limit rather than just a suggested safe speed.
Given my southern boy heritage and vast lack of experience with ice and snow driving, we did pretty well. At one point, a very large truck coming the other way leveraged his size advantage and claimed more than his share of the road, forcing us onto the shoulder and thus into the pile of snow created by the plows. Fortunately I was able to get back on the road before losing momentum and getting stuck. A while later, we were approaching a merge with another road and the lady in front of me decided to stop completely for some reason. It happened to be on a sheet of slick ice, so despite everything I and the antilock brakes could do, we bumped her. She had a steel trailer hitch that took the impact and left her car completely unscathed, and she waved it off and went on her way. However, her hitch made a mess of our front license plate holder. As the front plate is absolutely required for driving here, we MacGyvered a solution to hold it on using a twist tie from an appliance and a couple lengths of plastic cord from the bead-stringing kit Emily used to make bracelets for herself and her friends.
The trip took a total of 8 hours with 30 minutes for lunch our only stop. Fortunately, we arrived at the Choice Hotel in Shumen to find a very lovely and luxurious little (6 rooms) hotel and excellent attached restaurant. We had a nice dinner and are now just trying to fight off sleep long enough to make it to a reasonable bed time. Tomorrow is a day of rest and recovery, and I don't anticipate posting an update. We meet Severina at 10:00 on Monday.
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