Our route today took us across the northwest corner of New Jersey, through the Poconos, and onto I-81 from Scranton to Syracuse. The landscape was beautiful: rugged and mountainous, and I remembered driving on 81 from Binghamton to Harrisburg on my trips to DC from college.
For the first three years, I didn't have a car, and so when Thanksgiving rolled around I relied on those signs in the student union that had phone numbers on little tear-offs at the bottom to find my transportation south. Of course that usually meant ponying up gas cash up front, jamming a duffle bag in the trunk, and smushing in between strangers in the backseat of somebody's Chevy NOVA. Eight hours later, my aunt would pick me up at some parking lot off of the Baltimore Beltway, and drop me off there the following Sunday afternoon.
It was all more than worth it to me for four days with family. Three weeks later, I would be on my way home for winter break, which was an entirely different sort of trip involving airport limos, helicopters, and a first class ticket on Pan Am from JFK to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Longer and certainly more comfortable, the promise of family time sweetened those travels as well.
And the same was true today as I piloted our Subaru from Hightstown to Buffalo-- up and down mountains, through cities and towns, over rivers and around lakes, in sunshine and in rain, on empty roads and stop and go thruways-- our final destination was dinner waiting on a round oak table with five places set, and space for the dog underneath.
