Up way before sunrise, my SO and I tucked ourselves into our little car and headed north......four and a half hours north, to be exact. It seemed odd to be heading north in January - that trek usually being reserved for the months of May through October. Milwaukee traffic did not slow us down too much and we reached our 11:00 a.m. destination and appointment on time. Slogging through snow and ice-covered walkways, climbing over rather tall fences, and ducking between and under very large boats, we took our took the tour with the helpful guide who patiently answered all of our questions. Seeing the northern waters frozen and snowy was a first for us. All we had were our imaginations to carry us through as we walked about in the cold. After the tour, which lasted about an hour and a half, we found a Mom and Pop restaurant, got a bite to eat while we discussed all that we had seen, checked out another marina, then folded ourselves, once again, into our little car and headed back home for yet another four-and-a-half-hour drive. Upon arriving home we scarfed down some soup and got into our little car - again - to attend a meeting. As soon as we were backing down the driveway, we both commented that the very last place either one of us wanted to be was in the car going anywhere!
SO had set the trip meter in the morning and our driving today totaled just over five hundred miles. Of course, the words five hundred miles brought to mind the song that I must have sung at least five hundred times during my youth - "Five Hundred Miles" - made famous by both the Kingston Trio and the group Peter, Paul and Mary. Just about every person who was in junior or senior high school during the sixties or early seventies would be familiar with this song that was a campfire staple. Put a group of young people together with a fire and a guitar and you had "Five Hundred Miles".
It was just an odd day. Odd to travel so many miles (on purpose, no less), odd to be taken back in my mind to junior and senior high school, odd to be traipsing through marinas in January, odd to get home and turn right around and leave again, odd to be going to a meeting (on purpose, no less) that we really did not want to attend and odd to be blogging this late at night. (That is odd for me. Not the rest of you night owls.)
The challenge for me now will be to turn my mind off for the night. I need to 'park' the mental pictures from the day and the evening's meeting that was truly frustrating.
I know just the trick, too. I'll sing myself to sleep with the lyrics from the last stanza of "Five Hundred Miles":
If you miss the train I'm on,
You will know that I am gone.
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.
A hundred miles,
A hundred miles,
A hundred miles,
A hundred miles,
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.
Good night.
Ancora imparo
