I had sent her a couple text messages earlier in the day. Before she left, I showed her how to send and receive texts. I asked her, and yes, she did receive them and read them. Later, after the call. I texted her with an added thought--and I got a text reply. I texted back congratulations.
The trip, she said, was uneventful. One attraction they expected to see along the way was a place that boasted the world's biggest pecan. But a road apparently was closed, and the bus couldn't find another way to get there. Bottom line: They didn't see the pecan. Awww!
Today (Tuesday), they will see three shows in Branson. Sounds like they will be busy.
I dropped her off Sunday at 8 a.m. It's a really big bus, like the one last year. Don't think I have ever ridden on a bus that nice.
The night before she left, we had a nice visit with my friend, N, who lives a few miles away. We met at a place where N and I eat from time to time and had a pizza--they have really good pizzas.
N grabbed the bill. The waitress put it in the middle of the table at an inopportune moment--I had a piece of pizza in my right hand. My left hand darted out, but her right hand beat me to it. We fight over that whenever we go out--except when we went out to mark her birthday in late July. That night, I paid, and she left the tip. Otherwise, it's "Don't argue with your elders!" (She's about three years older than me.)
The three of us had a nice chat. We talked about my wife's trip, N's rescue dogs, her kids and grandkids, our kids. This and that. The topic somehow got around to chocolate, and it turns out that both of them like dark chocolate. N remembered she had a nice, rich dark chocolate bar in her truck, so she gave it to my wife when we were saying good bye. They hugged. It seemed to go very well.
We went back to the motel and went to bed early. Sunday morning, she got on the bus, and I headed back east, accompanied only by my own thoughts. They can be strange thoughts, you know.
I started thinking about ... modern art. Specifically, modern art on the road. Right on the road. What could have led to that? Well, this is what I was looking at ...
This is the two-lane highway, with the rising sun shining off all the squiggles and wiggles of tar they have put on over the years, apparently to seal cracks. Some sections of the highway have been repaved in recent years and are nice and uniform. The older parts look like this ...
You may also be able to see the rumble strips they put on the highways in the last year or so--the middle of the road and at the shoulders. That's going to be very handy in winter, when we have snow.
The state of Michigan can't afford to plow roads as much as it used to, so if you have to go somewhere in winter, especially at night, you may have to deal with snow-covered roads. The scary part is that the snow covers the pavement markings, so you can't see whether you are in the proper lane ... or edging into the other lane or onto the shoulder. A gentle rumble will tell me to turn the wheel a little and move back the other way.
All the highway lines are reflective now, of course. But I'm old enough to remember when they weren't. That was long before I started driving, but I remember my dad having to cope with that. Also, are you old enough to remember before highway signs had reflective paint? Back then, they put little glass reflectors on them, like this one. I used my flash so you could see them better ...
Guess I got sidetracked.
The sun rose higher as I kept driving east. Then, I saw something along the north side of the road. I pulled over and got my camera out ...
Hey! Don't you know that's a dangerous thing for you to do? Especially in Michigan during the first half of November. Don't you know what happens on Nov. 15? ...
I guess he knows.
Later, I passed the big marsh near the county line. It looks the way it did a couple weeks ago, thanks to our rainy summer ...
Since then, I found a photo I took at the same place back in September 2009. How different it looked only 13 months earlier, back when the western U.P. was in a severe drought! ...
Tomorrow, I'm going to a different marsh. This one is the Horicon Marsh, down in Wisconsin. I wrote about that trip earlier. This is the soonest I could travel south, and I was worried the geese would be gone by the time I get there. But it's been a fairly mild fall in the Upper Midwest, and those Arctic winds from the Canadian prairies haven't arrived yet. I lucked out on the weather, I think.
I plan to leave as early as I can Wednesday morning and drive straight down to the marsh (4+ hours). After my cameras and I are satisfied, I return north to Oshkosh, call my friends S and T and take them out to dinner. From there, we will go to my motel and the swimming pool. We went to the pool with S and her husband several times before, but I haven't been there with S and T. This time, it's the three of us.
Unlike past visits, I don't think we will take turns using the bathroom to change into swimsuits before going to the pool. None of us are especially shy.
Odds are, we will head to the whirlpool, located near the pool. S likes to go there. It's very warm and bubbly and relaxing in the whirlpool, with strong jets of water stirring up the surface. We'll all enjoy the water and try to guess what's happening below the surface. With all the whirlpool action and bubbles, you can't see what's happening below the surface. I think we will be sitting close together, enjoying being together again.
Eventually, we will go back to my room and make sure we are all very dry before we go back out in the cold weather so I can take them home. Nobody wants to catch a cold, right?
Thursday morning, I'm driving back north. I probably have to cover a volleyball regional championship game that night. The semifinal game was Tuesday night--that's why I can't leave till Wednesday.
Our football team won last Friday, so they play in the regional championship game this Friday night--on their home field, just 15 miles away. Two weeks later ... well, you know about that.
My older son called Sunday night, and we talked about it. He and his girlfriend are going for Thanksgiving dinner with her family, but we will be able to spend time with them earlier in the day. He said he would show me where we went last year and had that "buffaloaf" for Thanksgiving dinner. Yummmmm!
Of course ... look, folks, our team has gone to the state finals in Detroit for six consecutive years. They are going for No. 7 this fall. If I go, my wife says she will come along with me. But I want to stay home. It's such a long drive, and I'm so tense because of all the stuff I have to do and have to remember related to the state finals. It's definitely not a pleasure trip.
It's much different if I don't have to cover a game. Then it becomes a pleasure trip, and if the weather is behaving, we may go down there for a visit, either over Thanksgiving or the weekend before. But that way, we can set our own schedule and relax. But if the team keeps winning, I don't get many options.
Anyway, we'll figure it all out. At least, thanks to my trip, it won't be so lonely at home. Volleyball Tuesday and Thursday, football on Friday, I'm out of town on Wednesday, and she gets back home Saturday night.
OK, time to send her another text.
No comments:
Post a Comment