Out on the Road Today...

This morning I hop in the Camry and start out the ridge.  It's overcast, but promises to get bright soon.  Cool and breezy, but very comfortable feeling, not at all what the thermometer says (maybe my morning run in the cold has shifted my comfort zone a bit today).  The day just has a certain feel that I can't find words to describe, something from a memory, something I can't seem to put my finger on.  I push the button on the the radio, steering away from some mindless electronic pop song, and the sound of Don Henley begins to haunt my thoughts.

The Camry is gone, I'm in an old Trans Am.  The sun is starting to peak through the clouds, it'll burst through any minute and fulfill the promise of a warm sunny day.  Just over the next ridge is the beach, surf crashing, joggers getting in their exercise before the heat and bikinis start to get in the way.  I'm flying along the road, the whole world seems behind me as I struggle to obey the lyrics.  Don't look back, you can never look back.

A lifetime (or maybe 3 minutes) later I slow the Camry for a school zone.  Over the next ridge I can see the smoke from the John Amos Power Plant, telling me that the Kanawha River will be in view soon, with trains racing along its gravel banks and coal barges silently creeping downriver.  My thermometer says 30, suddenly it feels like it.  An electric beat starts up, foreshadowing some nonsense by Lady Gaga.  The moment is gone.

Summer is a beautiful time of year.  But I still have to go to work 5 days a week, there is no summer vacation for adults, no lazy months of forgetting all we've learned through the winter.  As much as I wish it were not so, I am no longer one of the boys of summer.  Today I find myself looking back, and feeling small and weak and wholly inadequate for the what the next couple of weeks hold.


It's been a weird start to what promises to be a weird (and possibly bad) day.  I'm off to re-stoke the fire, get my focus aimed forward again, and hopefully tonight I'll write Part 4 so that I can get it posted tomorrow morning.  Weird day...