Fixed Moments: Mixing Up Our Days

There really are a lot of interesting places in this great country of ours. Places that make you laugh, wonder, cry, be inspired, look away… We’re just wrapping up our Texas Tour, leaving the Dallas/Ft. Worth area tomorrow morning. We’ll do a driving day, going as long as we feel like toward Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, then stopping at a motel for the night. Then it’s two nights around the caverns, followed by three nights by White Sands, and it’ll be time for the run to the Grand Canyon.

As usual, a few sentences like that convey our trip logistics but they aren’t the experience. In a quick look back at my blog entries, I can see myself trying to slice off pieces of our trip and convey them via words and pictures, but I can tell I’m not succeeding. Not really. I just plain don’t think it’s possible to describe days and weeks like these. Take the past three days, where we’ve mixed everything from a spiritual event to bull riding to junk shopping to great moments in American history…

What we’ve found is that our kind of traveling is creating days that are strangely mixed. We read, do school work, then walk through Grand Prairie’s “Trader’s Village” (which is also our campground, if you can believe it), easily among the world’s largest yard/junk-sales, walking for blocks and blocks until we’re lost, buying things like a $2 wallet, an ear-brassiere (or at least that’s what we called them when I was a kid), roasted corn, and the purchase of purchases: A Magic Chef that Nan just used to make coleslaw and salsa to go with our burgers for dinner. Then we find ourselves finishing up a history lesson on the pilgrims on our way to downtown Dallas, where we tour the Sixth Floor Museum, a truly touching presentation of the story of President Kennedy’s life and death. Or we meet up with a Richmond alum who has, since her college graduation, gone on to complete seminary and is now serving as one of the pastors for the First Presbyterian Church in Arlington. She’s gracious enough to spend the day with us, taking us down to the historic Ft. Worth Stockyards where we see cowboys herd cattle down the street, Kerby rides a mechanical bull, Joelle sits atop a saddled steer, and we all taste our first ever fried pickles. (By the way, I’m proud to have several former students who are now in ministry positions, and we’re looking forward to seeing another when we get to Los Angeles.)

Now as the day ends and tomorrow we head toward yet another of the United States, the wind is blowing like gangbusters outside, at times shaking the camper hard from side to side and frequently blowing out the pilot light for the water heater. In the calm pauses between gusts I can catch an occasional whiff of marijuana coming from the huge camper parked next to us. (They’re a rough-looking group of five or six guys from Arkansas, all dressed in camouflage clothes when they arrived—we could hardly see them [rim-shot]. Fortunately, they’ve been quiet and polite, as has everyone here…. Not sure what this group is hunting for in February around Dallas, but I didn’t want to seem like a smart-arse by asking.) I’m still feeling full from the giant piece of fish I was served for lunch at The Press Box in downtown Dallas and from the hamburger I had for dinner, and I’m certain I need to eat better over the next few weeks or there’ll be a lot more of me coming home at the end of our trip than there was when we left. And I’m looking forward to ending this burst of blog-writing energy and getting back to reading a book I’m not yet sure I like.

Maybe other people would craft a trip like this with more structure, more organization, less of a hodge-podge of daily experiences. Not us. We’re loving just going with the flow and seeing the strange way days and weeks come together. We asked the kids tonight if they were enjoying the trip—if they liked the balance of going and staying, being busy and just hanging out—and they said they were having a great time. They really are a game couple of boogers. And Nan said she’s liking it, too, and not yet looking forward to all the hustle and bustle of being at home. And I’m with her. We know we’ll be home soon enough, back in our familiar house with our pets back and friends and family (at least some of it) around, but for now we’ll keep mixing up our days and wondering what we’ll see next.

Addendum: It took me two days for us to get internet through which to post this. In the meantime, we’ve again demonstrated our winter-weather making skills. In addition to bringing record lows to normally warm places, last night we brought 6 inches of snow to Odessa, Texas, and on into southeastern New Mexico. It’s snowing until noon, so in the interest of keeping our show on the road and out of the ditch, we’re motel-ing it for another night. It’s supposed to be warm sunny tomorrow, so we should be back on the road to somewhere bright and early.

(The Sixth Floor Museum on JFK in Dallas)