View from the Passenger Window

Our Garmin lady friend didn't get much of a workout during our Thanksgiving trip to visit Brent in Kentucky. It's really a pretty straight shot from here to there. We didn't even pull her out of the glove box except when we detoured to Santa Claus, Indiana, and later when we drove into Louisville to eat a Hot Brown at the Brown Hotel.

She didn't have to wear herself out, telling us "Recalculating" in that obnoxiously calm voice.

But 30-plus hours in the car caused me to do some recalculating of my own. Without a daily deadline for KFRM reports and blog posts, I think I read five books during the journey and while at Brent's. It had been a long time since I'd relaxed that much.

And I looked for beauty -- not in the quiet of a Kansas farmstead -- but at 70 miles per hour in the passenger seat of the car, when I thought the bridgework overhead resembled Christmas stars on top of the Zenith Co-op Elevator. 

"Narrow lanes" are a matter of context, don't you think? These massive bridges and their three lanes of pavement in each direction seem rather massive to me ...

 

when compared to the narrow bridge a couple of miles north of our house. That bridge gives a whole new meaning to "narrow lanes." (Just try driving a feed truck with no power steering as you come out a steep incline from the pasture and hit the "narrow lane" without taking a swim in Peace Creek.)

This time, we only saw the Gateway Arch at 60 MPH as we traveled through the heart of downtown St. Louis. (We stopped on our trip last January.)

None of our conversations were as complex as the bridge spans over the Missouri, the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers.

Randy said he'd just read a marriage survey in The Wall Street Journal in which the author said that comfortable silences are part of a good relationship. We have that covered. (And that's OK.)

 I only live the full life 

when I live fully in the moment.

Ann Voskamp, Author, One Thousand Gifts

Beginning an early morning of driving in a motel parking lot near St. Louis

Here's hoping for a weekend full of memorable moments - big and small.