I don’t know how many times I’ve walked out of the house to “do errands”. You gather your things – purse, shopping list, mail for the post office, deposit for the bank, bag for the farm stand, whatever. Then spend the next hour or two in and out of the car taking care of business.
This morning … errands took on a whole new meaning. I had to stop at the post office, then get a picture I was missing for a job. Today was perfect riding weather! The sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky. And, even though the temperature was supposed to be mid-80s this afternoon, the air was still cool this time of the morning. I’m taking the machine to do errands – hell, yeah!
I must digress… We call the Slingshot “the machine”. I don’t know how that started really. Years ago, after my great-grandmother passed, I came across some of her diaries. Every day of her life she wrote in the diary. What time she got up, what she made for meals, what she did during the day (NEVER anything interesting). She had kept the diary from sometime in the 1940’s when my great-grandfather (Jesse) died. Throughout that year’s diary, until the time he died, she’d talk about Jesse being “out with his machine”. It took awhile for me to realize that the “machine” she talked about was their first car! I’ll bet Jesse would like my machine.
So it was a beautiful, perfect day and I was taking the machine to do errands. It doesn’t get any better than that! Eight miles to the post office. Eight great miles! Mail my package and the postman tells me we have a package that was sitting at a different post office. The package was time sensitive, and considering this, did I maybe want to go pick it up? Well, yeah, I’ll go get it! That’s five more miles. Then I drove to Canal to take the missing photo. Sixty miles roundtrip of back roads, sunshine, the smell of flowers and fields, and hardly a soul in site. I was technically working – it was the best two hours working I’ve ever had!
So, I’ve come to explaining the purpose of this blog – the new adventure. I’m a member of a Facebook group called Ohio Road Trips. The posts are all about places people visit in Ohio, or asking for suggestions about where to visit. There are some amazing things in Ohio – history, art, nature. The state has an exceptional park system, as does Columbus/Franklin metro parks. From Columbus, you can be about anywhere in the state in three hours. Maybe longer taking the back roads and stopping to smell the flowers.
I want to spend one day a week on adventuring. Pick a place, map a country journey, visit a beautiful or interesting destination, have lunch someplace new. I tried to start the day of adventuring last year. We bought a boat and I thought we could go once a week to a new lake. We managed several weeks to have that day away, but not near as many as I wanted. Going on a boat, you’re kind of at the mercy of the captain – when we can/will go. I’m hoping adventuring with my own transportation will be more fruitful.
I’m going to make a list of places I’d like to see or events I’d like to attend. Then, at times, I’ll offer the second seat to family and friends. Maybe you’ll see someplace you’ve been thinking about visiting. Then, of course, I’ll be back here talking about our adventures. Maybe you’ll want to join me, maybe you’ll just come back and read about the journey, maybe you’ll see places you’d like to visit – but in the car – not everyone is made of open-air travel.
So, what do ya say? Anyone up for adventuring? Let’s go waste some time.