TRAVELS ALONG I-95

I love to travel. I despise the highway.

This conundrum catches me so often that I am surprised I get into cars at all for any reason. I prefer traveling backroads and byroads because, quite frankly, people-watching far exceeds watching out for distracted maniacs texting at 90 mph mere inches from my vehicle as we tool along down the asphalt.

I often set Waze, Google Maps, or whatever I am using (TomTom set with Billy Connelly's voice so he can bust my chops when I miss a turn) for navigation to the "avoid freeways" mode just to make my life better. It actually worked wonders coming from and returning to Charlotte-Douglas Airport in North Carolina. For those drives I was treated to some lovely neighborhoods, gorgeous architecture, and a low-stress ride. By avoiding the highway coming home from my youngest's college, I discovered the hidden spaces of Lake Massabesic that extended beyond its touristy shore, scenic views I never would've caught otherwise.

Now, though, summer is coming. I need to get from point A to point B along with every other jackass who has a license to drive. I am going to have to make some tough choices about how and when I want to be somewhere. For instance, do I really want a ninety-minute drive to the beach when it's only forty minutes away by highway? Does my brain reject all highways or just select highways?

I have friends who hate driving with me because I will be three or four exits from my own home, and I will veer off a completely random exit and come in the slower, more direct way. I also have friends who love driving with me because I don't tolerate traffic jams very well and will just point my car in the general direction of home then hit the gas pedal.

Either way, I sincerely hope that this is my Swan Song to both the George Washington Bridge and the Cuomo/Tappan Zee Bridge. Much like trying to cross the Merrimack River during rush hour here in New England, nothing good -- absolutely nothing good -- can ever result from me being stuck in stop-n-sometimes-go traffic with a bunch of irate New Yorkers trying to cross the Hudson River. 

While I do like traveling with friends and relatives, being a Boston/Northeastern Massachusetts native limits both my tolerance level and ability to form coherent sentences when in traffic. Mostly I just scream out four-letter words: "Door!" "Moon!"  ""Ride!" "Kiss!" "Hemp!" I also occasionally give the half-peace-sign finger wave, though that has curtailed in this age of Strangers with Guns.

I do love to travel, so if you favor a backroads Jean Shepard's America kind of experience, then I am totally your co-pilot any time at all!

SHOPPING IN PAIRS . . . PEARS

I hate shopping. Shoe shopping, clothes shopping, basically any kind of shopping. Okay, not book shopping, but everything else. Especially grocery shopping. I despise grocery shopping. 

Unfortunately, it must be done. So, I do what any self-respecting grocery store hater would do: I drag along a friend.

We lose each other shortly after the first aisle. She heads to the deli, and I move along to the next great thing that I probably don't need. My list seems endless. Of course, this particular store in the chain is set up differently than every other store in the entire universe. It starts with meats, but eggs are in there, too. The dairy is spread out all along the back wall, so you have to shop up and down five or so aisles to get from the cheese to the the yogurt, and then another five to reach the milk.

It's downright disorienting.

I try to speed through because I hate shopping and also because my friend said that she has a small list and could get a few things. I finally reach the fruits and vegetables area and text my friend: I lost you! I'm in produce.

My phone dings, and I assume it's my friend. It's not. It's my sister. I tell her that I've lost my friend. She wants to know where I am. I send her a snapshot of pears. Now, honestly, who the heck is going to buy and eat all of these pears? Is there some kind of pear festival coming about of which I am unaware? Since no one appears to be buying any pears (nor am I for I detest the taste), I park my cart right there in front of the display.

I suddenly see my friend zipping past me and heading deeper into the greens. I follow her. I am worried that she will be mad at me because I have filled my cart and she just had a few things to get. I am thrilled on two counts: she never got my message, and she has also ransacked the store and has a full cache of items, some possibly useless like a lot of mine.

We head to the check-out area, she in one line and I am in the one next to her. Today, she is the winner (loser) who has chosen the wrong line. But, since her cart isn't quite as jam-packed as is mine, she still finishes first and has to wait for me. I'd throw her a pear to eat while she waits . . . except I didn't buy any.

EPIC FOREST TRAILS AND OTHER POSSIBLE DISASTERS

For a while when I was a kid we lived in the woods. 

Not like in a cabin or a treehouse. We lived on three acres of woods and boulders, and we had paths through the forest that led to our friends' houses or forts or short-cuts to town. (Actually, the short-cut to town was through forbidden areas because of seasonal hunting, and I didn't discover the safer super short-cut until our last few months of living there.) We would trail-ski (not cross-country, but downhill through the woods) and sled and bicycle and run at breakneck speeds over rocks, launching airborne from log piles, and over/through/around trees.

It was epic fun.

My sister's family now lives in semi-similar conditions -- some woods, fewer rocks, occasional seasonal gunfire. They've resided there for years, and we have done our share of sledding and snowshoeing and plowing through the woods at breakneck speeds. I have been egging on my sister for a while now to create trails through the woods, perhaps even bike paths, but we've just never gotten around to it.

Until last week.

I arrive for Easter weekend, and my sister is excited to show me two paths she has made through the higher ground of her back hill. She hasn't done a bad job, if I do say so myself. Honestly, though, I am the one who was always bombing through the woods, heedless of branches, thorns, and animal dens. She has made excellent headway, but I am the Lewis-and-Clark of the family. If there's a trail to be blazed, I damn-well want to be the one spearheading it. 

I walk her trails a few times, but I do so with an eye to the deeper woods. After all, she can't be the only one having fun. I grab a steel bow rake and some Fiskars clippers then head into the lower woods. I start by clearing brush and branches both at my feet and along my body up to eye level. I loop through a mini-bog, up and over some fallen trees, and connect with my sister's handiwork. 

Or, so I think. When I try to reverse through my forged path, I realize I didn't do as handy a job as I first thought. I end up clipping my way backward, surely not quite the same way I came. Once I am back where I deposited the steel bow rake, I start hauling away fallen leaves, sticks, limbs, undergrowth, and anything else that moves. 

The positive is that I have the beginnings of a new trail. The negative is that once the leaves are removed, this path is muddy in the middle for a good seven feet. I cannot lay small limbs across it like a bridge because my sister's dog is a stick-retriever, so I haul fallen trees, instead. It makes for a dog-proof crossing, but the trees are unsteady and roll a bit, making the small mud bog more of a tightrope experience.

After a few regular rakings of the back woods, we have three mighty-fine trails connected and ready to go. I make a shortcut to connect the two upper trails closer to where the lower trail now comes in. My sister and I start eyeballing other areas where we can start trails, and, before we know it, we have ideas for look-out spaces and scenic areas right there in her backyard.

These may not be the epic trails of our childhood, but, to be honest, I'm not nearly as young as I used to be, so these shorter paths are much more my current speed. The dog and the the little kids seem to like the new trails, too. All in all, it's a win-win and will be even better when next winter comes and sledding through the trees will be safer now that some of the eye-poking sticks have been cleared.

SPRING FLOWERS AND WINTER CLOTHING

Spring is here, but it's taking its sweet time. Yeah, yeah, I know: We are not quite out of the snow zone. As a New Englander, I should relax. We've had snow in May around here.

So, it is a wonderful surprise when my daughter and son-in-law send me home from their house with a bouquet of flowers. Now, don't get me wrong. It's not a surprise that they gave me the flowers, because they're generous like that. The surprise is having a pop of color and spring inside of my house.

Just in the nick of time, I might add.

We Northerners are entering the WTHDIWTW stage of Spring. It's the same weather pattern that repeats itself in Autumn, but in October it's torture. Right now in April it's like free mental health boosters. The WTHDIWTW season is when the morning temperatures are Arctic and the afternoon temperatures hover around the equator. The car heat blasts in the morning, and the air conditioner blasts in the afternoon. That's at least manageable.

What is NOT so manageable is the clothing situation. Hence: WTHDIWTW. This stands for What The Hell Do I Wear To Work. If I wear my coat, I'm fine in the morning but feel like a total jackass carrying it into the house when I get home. If I brave only a sweatshirt on my way out to work, I suffer frostbite by arrival, but my ride home is quite pleasant even with the windows wide open.

Even the plants are suffering. They're all out there in the elements thinking, "Do we bloom? Do we grow? Should we turn green? Are those buds on my branches? What the hell do I do with myself?" The hardy ones throw caution to nature and pop out of the ground with sheer defiance. The more delicate ones bud a teeny bit then get tramped down when the snowplow comes by.

This all means that the bouquet of flowers not only lifts my spirits, it provides hope to all the plants outside the window that there really is life after winter . . . if only we all, plants included, could just figure out what the hell we are supposed to be wearing to survive these days.

LUCK OF THE IRISH

A couple of weeks late, but here is my St. Patrick's Day post. 

During the summer, I was in North Carolina for a few days. While there, my granddaughter and I were keeping ourselves occupied during her brother's sports practice, and we entertained ourselves searching for four-leaf clovers. Of course, we weren't likely to find them. In my whole life I think I've found one. It kept us occupied, and it provided a mystical, magical tale.

Fast forward to St. Patrick's Day weekend. I find myself back in North Carolina in a lovely neighborhood with many Irish-themed street names. We are out walking the neighborhood and spot several random patches of clover. Just for fun, the children stop and search for four-leaf clovers. It is, after all, St. Patrick's Day weekend. My grandson leans over and finds one. Then another. Then his sister finds one, as does their mom. 

Luckiest family ever!

I research this, though, Is there some ground cover that is four-leaf clover? You know, because I honestly cannot believe my own eyes here. There is some variation, native to Mexico, but it isn't this plant in front of us. This is just run-of-the-mill clover that is, apparently, amazingly lucky.

Well, we are on a street with a name that translates to the Irish Cill Chainnigh (Cainnech / Cainneach). I suppose this would be the weekend to share both our Irish heritage and the Luck of the Irish.