Tuesday, August 03, 2010

The drive-time beat-down

I used to be able to drive forever. Between J-Mom and me, we could have driven New York to LA in one continuous burst of tandem driving. But times have changed.

This past weekend we drove from Memphis to my parents’ home in north-central Louisiana then to Dallas and then back home to Memphis. It’s been a while since I’ve done that kind of driving and it was tough. Tougher than I thought it would be.

Daughter Number 1 and The Boy had been staying with my parents for the past couple of weeks. They had a great time, but were very ready to come home. After picking up the kids, we jutted out a bit further west to Dallas to visit some friends who moved from Memphis a little while ago.

Our visit there was nice. It had been a very long time since I’d last been in Dallas – though technically we were in a suburb – I was pretty impressed at their traffic management. Sure, there’s still gridlock, but for a city its size, Dallas does pretty well. DN1 said that the area we were driving into reminder her of Phoenix, but with trees. I think it was a pretty apt description.

We debated a bit over what to do with our time Sunday. There was some discussion about going to Six Flags, but rational thought won out. It was too hot, it would have been too crowded and a couple of the crew were not feeling 100 percent well. Instead we went here. Fantastic way to spend some time on a hot day.

Otherwise, a lot of time was spent watching shark-related programming and resting. J-Mom and her gal-pal got to spend a lot of time catching up and that made the trip all the more worthwhile.

Up to this point, we all doing pretty well (other than a few sniffles and a couple of oncoming colds), but the drive home was brutal. Next time, and there will be a next time, we’ll have to have some time between driving in and driving out.

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