Short Bit #3

[I love email-to-post. It lets me have these five minute breaks from reality. With alarming frequency today.]

Just a few short hours and I'll be on my way west. A long layover in Minneapolis (four hours -- seriously, what the heck?!) and then my little flight in the dark across SoDak.

I. Can't. Wait.

I won't land till well after 10:00 tonight, but that's okay. The lights of Rapid City will be there ... The amusing black hole of Rapid Valley ... M-Hill aglow ... The antennae on the hills throughout town ... The sign on the top of the Alex Johnson downtown ...

And Mia Sorella there to pick me up for the weekend's first adventure.

Then the gorgeous (even in the dark) drive, likely skirting town on our way south and west ... Past all the tourist stops, the last convenient gas station, and to the Gaslight (also a distinctive light feature!) ...

We'll be all over the Hills, too. Custer, Rapid City, Piedmont, Storm ... Lots to see.

I've lost chunks of today in five minute intervals as I stopped and thought about those drives. I've traveled some of those roads enough to picture every building, every gas station, every landmark, every sign ...

Sorry. Distracted for a moment.

Tomorrow morning, I'll wake up right in the thick of it all, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

?

The confusion continues. Tuesdays seem to be the days for odd discoveries. Hmmm ... Much stress. Big presentation for work tomorrow. I'm downright scared right now, but that's probably mostly due to the fact that I have NO IDEA what to expect. On the bright side, in 24 hours, it'll all be over. Thank goodness. Then there are just papers left, but papers I can handle. And a presentation for senior design, but that's a group thing. Ten days and it's just finals week. I like finals week. Things are oddly easier during finals week.
Read more

The Ashley Files: The Gerbil Story

I'm not totally sure what spurred this memory, but this is a story that needs to be told. Over the years, I've had a lot of random jobs. It started when I was young and glued pictures for bridge reports (my family's version of "working with the family business). I had a job at Subway one summer (easily my least-favorite job), was a bridge inspection field technician with the family business, worked in a church camp kitchen, and was a lab assistant. The summer I started this blog, I was working at the school's day care. It was my second summer there. The job was certainly not what I was hoping to do the rest of my life -- but for a nineteen-year-old it was decent money and okay hours. And hey, a couple times a week I got to hang out at the pool and get paid for it. Not a bad gig. [My dad also referred to it as the "world's best birth control" and he may have been right.] I don't remember a lot of the ins and outs of that summer -- most
Read more

2019 Year In Review

It was awful. Fine. It wasn’t all bad. I have a niece now. My job is pretty awesome. I like my residence fine. I … avoided all parking tickets? But wow, was there a lot of garbage in the meantime. An unexpected funeral for a friend who died decidedly too young. Family members in and out of (and back into) the hospital. And throughout the last third, the specter of cancer hanging over everything. While a part of me keeps saying, “There is no need to dwell on all the crap, Ashley,” the rest of me is almost too exhausted for optimism. 2020 has potential, yes. Buckets of potential. Oodles of it. 2020 is chaotic neutral staring us in the face. Switzerland with anger issues. Taunting us with its possibilities. RIP 2019. 2020... Please don't be a jerk.
Read more