Wanderlust

I don’t mind a long road trip on my own. I can stop wherever and whenever I like, and I enjoy seeing new stretches of road, new places, what have you.

For a number of years, I was saddled with both an unreliable car and a miserable financial situation (of my own doing). One of the nice things about getting my current car has been the chance to occasionally go somewhere — only I haven’t really done it much.

The only real overnight pleasure trip I’ve taken since I got the current car in 2016 was about a year ago, when I went to West Tennessee for a cousin’s party. But that wasn’t a hotel trip; I spent a night at my sister’s home, which is about halfway there, and then I stayed with a family member the night of the event.

My sister and I took our father out to lunch for Father’s Day, and while we were making conversation, my sister laughingly reported that her son, my nephew, had complained about a long drive somewhere. She reminded him of all the long drives she made to cheer him on when he was a college football star.

I piped up with basically what I said in the first paragraph above. I said I was looking forward to taking a road trip one of these days. Dad and Elecia both responded to me with “Well, why don’t you?”

Why don’t I, indeed?

A couple of years ago, there was a “Saturday Night Live” exhibit at a museum in Chicago that I really wanted to see — and I had a Mountain T.O.P. friend who, at the time, lived near Chicago and graciously offered to put me up for a…