The Road to Heaven

Many years ago I was talking to my sister on the phone, and said something like, "You know what they say about good intentions." She completed my thought by saying, "Yes, the road to heaven is paved with good intentions." I hated to burst her bubble by explaining that it was actually the road to hell, but it still makes me laugh when I recall that conversation.

I had good intentions when I headed out to CO. My main goals were to help Ryan finish packing, maybe enjoy ourselves a little bit, co-pilot and do my share of driving on the way back, and knit and listen to audiobooks along the way. 

I accomplished some of those intentions. We did have all the packing finished by the time the moving truck arrived last Friday morning. We did enjoy ourselves; John fished almost every day, we ate at our favorite taqueria, Ryan and I went to The Loopy Ewe and we went on one of our favorite Fort Collins hikes to Reservoir Ridge looking for musket balls (and found some). 

I did my share of driving, but I barely knit a stitch and we didn't listen to any audiobooks despite my careful consideration of listening materials, knitting projects, and our intentions. Ryan and I talked a lot, but with the crazy high speed limits on Route 80 (80 mph in Wyoming, and 75 mph for most of the other states we went through), neither one of us was very relaxed while driving and we needed to keep our attention focused. We drove five hours on Friday and got to Nebraska, but Saturday was a terrible 17-hour day on the road. We couldn't find any hotels with vacancies despite checking 16 of them in South Bend and Elkhart, Indiana. We were lucky with the 17th hotel, and got what was probably the last room in Elkhart around 1:00 am. We were determined to get home on Sunday, so we spent a mere 12 hours on the road that day and then and fell exhausted into bed in NJ on Sunday night. 

Ryan is a minimalist, but we still cleaned out and donated 11 bags of stuff to Goodwill, and packing up everything in his house gave me a new appreciation for all of the stuff/crap that is in our house in NJ (and let's not forget MD)! One of my intentions going forward is to really clean out over the next year. I've already been putting things in the Goodwill box as I notice them, and there will be many, many more boxes in the future. Hopefully I'll be able to pave a road to a far less cluttered house and not one in the other direction. 

So what are your own good intentions and how are you sticking with them?

I'm Back With Three Things

After a long week of cleaning out and packing, driving for 1750 miles and 27 hours, and several failed attempts to meet the moving van at the storage facility before we finally succeeded, we are back. I enjoyed sleeping in this morning and not having any scheduled tasks that had to be started at the crack of dawn. There is still plenty to do - catching up with bills, laundry, and life in NJ before I head to MD next week to catch up there, making room for Ryan and some of his stuff since he can't move in to his house until Aug. 15th, and making a little time for a bit of reading and knitting.

Since it's Thursday, I thought I might ease back into blogging and share three things we saw during the drive from CO to NJ.

1. Some interesting skies

I took this one on Saturday morning as we left Kearney, Nebraska. There were torrential thundershowers that woke us up frequently during the night, but at least we didn't have to drive in the pouring rain.

2. Thousands and thousands of acres of corn

All we saw through Nebraska, Iowa, and much of Indiana was corn, with a few soybeans for contrast. Nebraska is the Cornhusker state, and it turns out that Iowa grows more corn than any other state in the US (2.7 billion bushels). We got a real feeling for just how vast corn production is in these states.

3. Wind Turbines

We got to see hundreds of these along Route 80, and they were interesting every time. Most of them were in Nebraska with a few in Iowa, and most had their rotors turning slowly and steadily, even though there was no wind evident at ground level. 

We saw several trucks towing turbine rotors and they gave us an even better idea of how massive these things are. It took us a while to figure out what they were were!

I'm glad to be back. Be sure and check in with Carole to see what three things others are writing about today.