Re-entry
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
I came into the office this afternoon to ease my re-entry. I'm not supposed to be back until tomorrow from vacation, but we made the strategic decision to drive from Orlando to Grand Rapids non-stop, which put me in my bed sometime between 3 and 4 a.m. and allowed me to sneak into the office this afternoon, where I've been greeted by some happy faces, piles of newspapers, magazines and email, a red blinking light on my phone, and a sea of red in my email inbox. And, of course, several unposted blog comments (which are now posted!).
We rented a condo in Orlando the past week and did the obligatory visits to Disney parks, Sea World and Cocoa Beach. Jack, my six-year-old, braved thrilling rides and got his first real Mickey hug. Conner and Dillon found many ways to make interesting noises in the van during long stretches of driving, which of course frayed my nerves and at times made me the "bad dad" who snarls at his kids. We ate at great restaurants (try Manny's Chop House in Winter Haven) and Kari and Amanda went antique shopping. We sat at the pool a lot, and Conner and I got burned just a little (me because I couldn't reach my back when putting on the lotion and forgot to ask someone to get me when I arrived at the pool).
Yesterday, after getting a very early start and having my family sleep in the van behind me, we stopped at a Waffle House in Georgia for brekkie. We don't have the WH up here in Michigan. We also don't have grits served up here very often. It was a good cultural experience for the family.
My son Dillon is really into Civil War stuff right now, so we stopped at the Chickamauga battlefield museum just south of Chattanooga on the way back home yesterday. There's a "driving tour" of the battlefield with lots of great monuments to check out. I'd loved to have spent more time there actually walking the fields and woods with the boys. But the two-hour break from driving was all we got. We plan on doing some of the more eastern Civil War destinations in the future, but the Chickamauga tour was actually quite educational and interesting. Even for Amanda, I think, who is not very much into that sort of thing.
We drove through a lot of cities I've never been to, thanks to Garmin Nuvi. Because of the side trip to Chickamauga, we were thrown off our plans a little to return all the way home via I-75. The GPS (we nicknamed it "Jenny") was bringing us up through Chattanooga from Fort Oglethorpe a different way than we had arrived. I assumed it was bringing us back to I-75, but it actually was taking us out the west side of Chattanooga to I-24 to Nashville, where we were "re-calculated" to take 65 up to Indianapolis and 69 to 94 to 131 to GR. Let's just say that by the time my thickness realized we were on a new path, it had become the shorter trip. SO, we ended up going to Nashville and Bowling Green and Elizabethtown and Louisville (I've never been to any of these places, but they sure look nice from the freeway). We went through Indianapolis, which I have been to before. And then through Fort Wayne, which looks really nice for a city you're passing at 75 mph at 1 a.m. It seemed to be very popular with truckers, since so many of them were parked along the interstate there. In fact, at that time of night, you kind of feel like an invincible Mario Andretti passing semi trucks one after the other, with no other passenger cars challenging your road supremacy.
Ok. Enough of my road ramblings. I'm back at my desk and wading through tons of communications coming at me from every direction (electronic, print, and in-person). Somehow, though, it still seems less stressful than navigating America by minivan with four kids in the back and the price of gas going through the roof.