The Wind at My Back

 I am an unusual traveler.  I love to travel.  I hate to leave home.  The month of January makes leaving home much easier if the attire for our destination involves shorts and sandals.     Mark Twain once observed "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”    Good advice, though with all due respect to Mr. Twain, I suspect in 20 years I will be dead.  All the MORE reason to “throw off the bowlines.”  Especially if they are frozen.

In the back seat as we began our journey were our neighbors, Bill & Mary, among the nicest people in the universe.  We’ve been friends for years but never traveled together for more than a few nights.   A couple of weeks together should test the fiber of our friendship.  So should the fiber I had for dinner at Cracker Barrel our first night on the road – a large bowl of pinto beans.   Hey, you get the trade winds in your sails your way and I’ll get them my way.

After hitting the drive-thru at Dunn Brothers Coffee, we headed east – our first night’s destination unknown.  The roads were clear, the sun was up and the gas prices were down.   First stop – Vienna.  Not, Vienna, the small town an hour south of Jefferson City - Vienna, Illinois - between St. Louis and the Kentucky state line - at the Dairy Queen.

Nine hours and 517 miles from Dunn Brothers Coffee we pulled into a Comfort Suites Hotel in Manchester, Tennessee, the county seat of Coffee County, Tennessee, for the night.  For about 15 hours we boosted the population of Manchester from 8994 to 8998.

In 2011 we barely escaped Jefferson City to meet my wife’s cousin’s in Orlando after a 20-inch snowfall combined with a minus 7 degree temperature reading to make it REALLY hard to cast off the bowlines.  On Day 2 of that trip, after escaping the snow and sub-zero Missouri temperatures, we awoke in Tennessee to a freezing rain weather advisory.  We made it to Chattanooga only with the aid of a fleet of salt trucks.

Day 2 of THIS trip was much less eventful.  The only ice we encountered was on our windshield and was easily disposed of before heading to our first stop of day 2, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, the subject of my next blog.

The ever-observant Mark Twain ALSO noted “I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."   

Even more so when pinto beans are involved.