Nostalgically Speaking

See how I am? I tell you I am going to work hard and post more. Then nothing, nada, zip, crickets chirping. I've started December with zero posts. Three hundred posts for the year is starting to seem a difficult target.

It is still cold for this time of year, but not frigid January-like weather. I wouldn't mind spending a few days at the beach. Technically I could. I still have more than a half million hotel points. Yes, you read that right. And that is just with one chain. I probably have anywhere from three to five nights at two other chains. I say I could technically go on vacation. The gas and food money is a different matter. Besides, the wife has to babysit for the grandgirls. And there is no way the wife would go anywhere at Christmastime.

It is strange to think that one year ago I was in Mexico visiting the plant after starting a new job. It is remarkable how things change so fast.

I love being home with my wife and family, but a little bit of me really misses life on the road. I spent 25 years traveling for work. Sure, sometimes the hours of highway miles and monotonous meals and anonymous hotel rooms became tiring. The week-long trips especially to China or Mexico or Europe were a burden. The routine visits to places like Naperville, Rockford, or Charlotte every month became boring. But driving to new places and seeing the odd tourist sight and roadside attraction has left me with memories to last a lifetime.

The Buddy Holly crash site, the Spam Museum, Hoover homestead? Been there. Duesenburg Cord Museum: Check. Battlefields large and small throughout the land -- of course. Waterfalls, roadside markers, the Field of Dreams, heck yes. I have seen spectacular sunsets, mountain flowers, lakes, rivers, fields, and hills. I have spent more hours driving the mind-numbing monotony that defines I-70 than I can count. I have spent thousands of hours squirming in discomfort on the thinly padded seats of crowded airports and dined alone in restaurants in hundreds of cities and towns.

I have probably flown close to one thousand flights, driven well over a million miles, and spent more than 3,000 nights on a hotel mattress. For all of the discomfort, aggravation, and pure boredom that defines the life of a road warrior, I miss it far more than I could ever believe.