Alongside a Gibbous Orange Moon

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

From Schenectady to NoVa in Twenty-Nine Easy Steps

Abbey Oak Drive, Vienna, Virginia

For the first time in many years, the Schenectady Huths are taking a real vacation. This, for us, means a long car trip for no other purpose than to go someplace else (tho we will be seeing Nancy’s parents). But we’re not going to a wedding or a funeral or a conference. The traveling is the thing.

Since this is a real vacation, I made sure to begin it in the proper way—by staying up until 2:30 in the morning so that I’d get almost no sleep the night before. You see, I needed to finish my taxes so I wouldn’t have that huge weight across my shoulders. (After finishing my taxes, I realized that the “weight” I was talking about was actually the money in my savings account.)

Nancy and I both went to work today. But I left early for a longstanding appointment to see the dentist, and I decided to squeeze in a haircut as well. So I am now a new man. My hair, which was unfruitful in the first place, is now so short that I have no use for a comb. I donated my comb to my son Tim, who could stick twenty combs in his head and still have room for more.

In the dentist’s chair, I catnapped while the hygienist cleaned my teeth. (I have to find sleep somewhere.) Unfortunately, the dental visit took longer than I expected because I needed a huge series of 16 X-rays, without which the dentist would have nothing to look at for 30 seconds before saying, “Looks good to me.”

Nancy, meanwhile, took our annoyance of dachshunds to the kennel for a stay, packed up the car, and gave Gate (our cat) some new toys to make him think he isn’t lonely when we’re gone. Once I made it back home, we were on the road in a few minutes.

Soon Nancy was driving us down I-88, through New York’s diminutive version of the Smokey Mountains. Turkey vultures circled slowly overhead as if bringing forth a premonition. We made it through Binghamton into Pennsylvania. When we passed by Scranton on I-81, I realized that this was the first time the family had been on this section of road when it wasn’t being repaired, which made me wonder why the road was in such bad shape.

As we sat in the car listening to Nancy’s mix CD, I jotted down the names of her eclectic selection of musicians: AC/DC, Elton John, the Dixie Chicks, Uncle Kracker, Elvis the First, The Clash, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Uncle Tupelo, REM (with our favorite traveling song, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”), Tal Bachman, Tom Cochrane (with our traveling theme song, “Life is a Highway”), Van Morrison, TLC, Johnny Cash, Paul Simon, the Rolling Stones, Nancy Sinatra, and the Velvet Underground. All but one of these musicians or groups has only a single song on this CD. What is your guess for the artist awarded the honor of two songs?

The day turned to night and we drove thru Harrisburg, past Gettysburg, into Maryland, over the Potomac, into a dark stretch of Virginia, and then into that part of NoVa that used to be my home. Falls Church and Herndon were around me somewhere, and I was again in the county where two of my sisters were born. As we drove east on 7, we saw a huge gibbous orange moon hugging the horizon, clinging to the tops of the trees, and we were almost there.

Soon we drove into woodsy neighborhood of Vienna filled with twisting roads and dark dips. By eleven in the evening, we were at the doorstep of Betsy and Steve’s house. Nancy’s sister and brother-in-law welcomed us with a sleeping Shannon and we talked but a bit before heading to bed.

Sign of the Day: National Workzone Week

||+ permalink Comments Geofhuth 11:43 PM