Traveling Tales

As any of you who have been waiting for a return phone call or email from me may have assumed, I have been traveling lately, but none of my trips have had any Arts and Crafts connections. In fact, as you are reading this, I am inside a sixteen-foot rental truck with my son Eric, moving him from Salt Lake City to Statesboro, Georgia, where on Monday he starts a new career as Dr. Eric Johnson, professor of chemistry, at Georgia Southern University.

Last Monday Eric started his week by capping a five-year research project with an intense but successful three-hour defense of his doctoral thesis. On Tuesday he cleaned out his office and said his goodbyes before getting on a plane Wednesday morning and flying to Georgia. On Thursday and Friday he had several faculty orientation meetings on campus, between which he raced around checking out apartments before signing a lease just hours before flying back to Salt Lake City. He then spent the weekend packing, picking me up at the airport, and loading the rental truck with all his belongings.

That was his week.

So, why not hire a moving company? Timing. Moving companies have to combine several small loads into one large truck in order to make a cross-country move affordable, so not only might Eric’s belongings be shifted around, transferred from one truck to another, or even put into temporary storage, the firm could not guarantee an arrival date. Eric has to be in Statesboro on Thursday of this week for more meetings on Friday before delivering his first lecture in front of 143 freshmen on Monday.

What he didn’t need was to be living in an empty apartment for several days while waiting for all of his belongings to arrive.

And so he and I are driving, literally as you are reading this, from Salt Lake City through Cheyenne, Lincoln, Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta down to Statesboro, which is fifty miles west of Savanah, the coast, and great seafood.

All fine cities, but we won’t have time to do any more than tour the nearby rest stops, grab a burger, switch drivers, and read interstate billboards.

Oh, and did I mention we were pulling Eric’s car on a trailer behind us, just to make driving over two mountain ranges and across the plains a little more challenging?

Hopefully by the time we pull into Statesboro on Thursday afternoon, we will still be speaking to each other.

And the trailer will still be behind us.

Until next Monday,

Once started, you never stop being a parent.

Bruce