.
Day 2 on the journey with my parents to Florida…..
.
.
Well, the roads were opened again today despite rumoured trucks having jackknifed. We continued the journey, hoping to make up some of the 1.5 hours we lost yesterday, and a few minutes into the trip, along a stretch of highway maybe 2 miles in length, we saw 25 vehicles on the side of the road or in the ditch, abandoned….. including a beer truck and a UPS truck. We imagined they just all got together and partied in the beer truck. I continued counting the lonely vehicles buried in snow and reburied in plowed snow, and ended with a low estimate of about 56. Not including the area around Tamarack which had a whole bunch of tractor trailers parked on the sides of the highway and along the exit ramp….. not sure why, but everywhere you looked you’d see tractor trailors, so I didn’t count them. Plus, they weren’t necessarily abandoned due to weather. Okay, enough about that: cars slidey, mucho snow, moving on.
The drive was ominous at first, but the crazy gray didn’t fall on us (sorry New Yorkers, you might have gotten it by now). The snow could be seen as far south as North Carolina, and not far from the South Carolinian border. By Virginia, the sun had come out at least, and followed us south the rest of the way. Driving became better, and we chose our stops carefully so as not to waste time unnecessarily, and ended up making up the lost time. We are currently in Georgia, 3 miles from the Floridian border. Tomorrow, if all goes well, we arrive.
I love the drive down to Florida for many reasons: the first, and most important of which, is that it gives me time to do absolutely nothing. Nothing is required of me, nobody is bothering me (save the relatively few times when my mom chit chats with me, and that’s not always bothersome), and I know I have *time*. That’s like my first gift of Christmas. My favourite things to do on the trip: sit and stare out the window; listen to music and stare out the window; stare out the window until I’m inspired and then write poems; watch for deer, and record the time and number of deer; think; feel spiritual; philosophize; and this year, we have a van that plays DVDs so I did that once yesterday. But I can watch DVDs anytime really, so I went back to my traditional entertainment sources today. It’s beautiful, having mandatory time to do nothing. If you work it right, it’s the most awakening relaxation you can have.
Clio44's Blog 