Almost Home

Two long days of driving have brought us to a truck stop near Punxsutawney, PA, home of the famous groundhog, Phil. We’ll have to wait for another road trip to meet him…we are just passing though.

We have come to rest in a Flying J truck stop, complete with Denny’s restaurant, high on a bluff overlooking Rte. 80 on this final night on the road.

We expect to roll in to East Haddam late tomorrow afternoon, crank up the washer, and give Big Red a well-earned rest.

We’ll be talking about this adventure for some time. So what did you do on your summer vacation, Merrows? We took a three thousand mile road trip in an old diesel pick up truck so that Arthur could ride his bicycle 470 miles (sometimes in life-threatening heat!) along with fifteen thousand or so other lunatics.

We learned to appreciate truck stops, pork tenderloin sandwiches, and the handsome big-hearted state of Iowa with its corn fields and quintessential American small towns.

Arthur and Annie had one of the more unusual father-daughter bonding experiences including three flat tires in one day, and I learned that I can wrassle a big ole truck across a whole state of back roads and come up with cold beer when it really counts.

There was no noble purpose to this…except maybe that Arthur proved to himself that at 67 years of age, he’s not quite over the hill. RAGBRAI is surely an unusual rite of passage to old age.

We come back changed not only by all we saw but by knowing that the already small Merrow family is now smaller by one, having paid witness to the final chapter in Arthur’s mother’s remarkable 97 year life.

And if I could make one recommendation to my friends based on all this, it would be this:
 •  Go on a long journey to someplace not anything like your home,
 • try something you’re not sure you can do,
 • and once in a while go ahead…bite off and chew up the gastronomical equivalent of corn dog.

Thanks for coming along on this adventure!

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PICTURE CREDITS (1) Puxatawny Phil as found on Geekology; (2) Corn Dog from Flickriver.com (you might want to go check out their celebration of all things corn dog)