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player ready...It has been 27 months since we took our last road trip to visit our daughter and her family in Colorado and our two-day journey was, pardon the contradiction, both uneventful and surprising.
We can always fly, but we prefer seeing the country this way. The 1,000-mile drive on both Interstates 80 and 76 with its frequent rest stops and a side trip or two are part of our annual excursion.
Over the years we have accumulated a personal list of places to eat and places to rest. We quickly discovered that cruise control, when used wisely, is the easiest way to cover ground when the speed limit in most of Nebraska and Colorado is 75 mph and you seem to be in the slow lane while doing 78.
What we did not expect to see but should have realized was that COVID-19 and the resultant national lockdown of almost all forms of endeavor put everything from human interchange to road repairs in a two-year holding pattern.
On our journey, segments of a four-lane highway in need of work when we last traveled in 2019 were still incomplete or are finally in the process of repair in 2021. Maneuvering though miles of both patched and unpatched roads make a driver keep two hands on the wheel, and are a great advertisement for final passage of a national infrastructure bill.
Travelers usually find each other at rest stops in the afternoon or motels in the mornings.
One of the small pleasures of driving is talking to others on their way to other places. In Lincoln, Nebraska we chatted over morning coffee with Kenny and Mary who were heading home to Cape Girardeau, Missouri after finishing their long journey over the iconic Route 66. It took them a couple of years to complete the trip from Chicago to California and included a side trip through northern California.
Kenny is a large, gray-bearded plain-spoken man. After exchanging handshakes we began exchanging classic small talk. “Where are you from” to “what did you do.”
I told him I was for a short time in my life from Missouri while attending the state university at Columbia. He said he once worked for Missouri Farmers Association, which is headquartered there. Our conversation ran the gamut from the weather to the state of newspapers.
“I think you and I think alike,” he told me.
I do not know if we really think the same way, but we left it at that.
I will probably never see nor hear from Kenny and Mary again, but the five minutes we spent together in decent conversation made a poor motel breakfast seem good.
At a rest stop near North Platte, Nebraska, Madame made friends with Sue and her husband, both of whom are owned by a Great Dane-Mastiff and a Great Dane St. Bernard. Since neither of the dogs have a driver’s license, they allow the couple to drive the family van from Sugar Grove, Illinois to Colorado. In a kind of noblesse oblige (the obligation of the privileged to be nice to the lower classes), the dogs recognize their superiority and allowed Madame to pet them.
By the time you read this we shall have started our return to our home in Park Forest. The road back always seems longer and the driving more difficult. We dearly love our Colorado family, but the call of home always resonates. We enjoy the strangeness of places seldom visited, but there is a need to get back to the work that needs to be done.
We need to get back to our roots and our lives. We need to plan for the coming weeks and months. We need to start thinking about the rest of this year and make plans for next year and another trip West.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.