I am sitting rather securely at my desk in the office of Your Favorite Newspaper and I’m glad the scenery around me is not moving.
My wife and I on Saturday finished a road trip that carried us to the not-so-far reaches of our nation’s eastern states. We went to New York, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio before returning to the Hoosier State. During our trip, we traveled about 1,700 miles in eight days, rekindled an old friendship, met a lot of nice people, and visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
It was our first road trip for a long time. We last did one around 1990, with three kids and my mom in an aging customized van. We had friends with us who had their own van and children. We’d pull into a rest stop and swap passengers between the vehicles. It was fun.
This time around, it was just Susan and me. We had a couple of purposes behind this journey — one, to take a small refrigerator to our daughter and son-in-law in upstate New York, and two, to visit the place where Susan and I were born.
We were successful in the first task and quite unsuccessful in the second. The refrigerator was not a full-size one and fit into the Jeep; we just had to be sure we didn’t stop in a hurry to avoid becoming the meat in a refrigerator-and-windshield sandwich.
As to the second task: Susan and I were born at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in the early 1950s when our dads were in the Army during the Korean War. We figured we could have our pictures taken on the base where the hospital is or was.
To quote the gentleman at the visitor’s center, “Oh, no, no, no, no. We can’t let sightseers on the base. No, no, no, no.”
We’d actually tried to enter the base before going to the visitor’s center, but a guard at the gate straight out of Central Casting for gruff Army officers told us no and told us to drive over to the side and turn left. Goodbye.
We visited some interesting places — Fort McHenry, Antietam, Harper’s Ferry, and the Flight 93 Memorial among them. We also stayed overnight with my former co-worker Caleb Sanders, who is a terrific host and a better friend.
Also, I was happy to find out that Sirius XM has a Road Trip channel. Don’t leave home without it. “We are not responsible for your speeding ticket if you try to keep up with this next song,” they said.
Herewith some observations on taking a road trip, just in case you’re thinking about it:
• Prepare, but don’t overprepare. Some flexibility is required, so don’t glue all of your plans down ahead of time. Here’s an example, from late in the week. We were tired after visiting the Flight 93 site so we decided to stop early and take it easy, figuring we could get to Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house south of Pittsburgh, the next day, That was something we should have planned for. You have to make reservations to see Fallingwater. Oops. So we made a Plan B and went to Columbus, Ohio, instead. We walked around Ohio Stadium and visited the Jack Nicklaus Museum, which would be exciting even if you don’t like golf. Again, prepare but don’t overprepare.
• Take your time. We did a lot of walking. If we were younger, we probably would have been quicker about things, but as we plodded along we read the plaques and the signs and anything else in front of us. We learned a lot.
• Take along a friend or two. Susan and I love each other, but it would have been nice to have had someone else to talk to from time to time — someone about our own age with similar interests. The next time we do this, we’ll be taking applications, if you’d be interested.
Meanwhile, it’s good to be home.
Want to know anything else? Write to the email address immediately below this line.
daves@news-banner.com
