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| Welcome to PA and to Sharon, The Friendly City! That is Ohio on the Left |
www.dennismook.com
We lazily left Dayton this morning about 8:30 a.m. with much anticipation and some sadness. Today, we would drive to Ann Arbor, Michigan to drop off my traveling partner, Vance, at his house. There was a bit of a quietness to the morning as we knew our great adventure would soon be coming to an end. Despite the impending conclusion to our trip, we managed to cut up and laugh along the way to his house. As an aside, I have never seen some many trucks as we did yesterday and today. Unbelievable number.
We arrived at Vance's home about 12:30 p.m. I transferred my belongings from his burgundy Subaru Outback, which we named for this journey "Ruby Ru," to my vehicle, which I left at his house for the duration of the trip. I freshened up, filled up my water bottle, washed out my insulated coffee cup and, after giving each other a hearty handshake and hug, was on my way by 1:00 p.m.
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| Hammer Down; East Bound |
My intention was to travel to my hometown of Sharon, Pennsylvania to visit my sister, who still lives locally. I had a hotel reservation that I had made the night before and would stay at a nice place. Well, meeting my sister just wasn't going to work out, so for Plan B I thought I would then drive as far as I felt comfortable, then spend the night, possibly as far as northern Virginia. Vance's home to mine is 660 miles. Too far for me to drive by myself in one day, especially leaving at 1 in the afternoon. When I went to cancel my hotel reservations, the message said that if I canceled, I would still be charged for the night. What? Usually, one has until 6 p.m. to cancel before being charged. Not wanting to risk being charged for a room in which I didn't stay, I came on into Sharon and drove to the hotel. Asking the clerk, I was informed they had a 24 hour cancelation policy. Well, I only made the reservations at 10 p.m. last night so there was not any way I could have canceled at any time, evidently! It is what it is, and I am tucked into my hotel tonight and will leave very early tomorrow morning to get through Pittsburgh before their morning rush hour traffic.
It is both good and sad to be in my hometown. Vance and I both grew up in Sharon, along with two other lifelong friends who weren't able to make this journey with us. I wish they were able as 4 lifelong friends together for a journey of this nature would have been even better than it was.
Sharon is an old steel and manufacturing city. The Sharon Steel and Westinghouse Electric transformer plants were the two large local employers in the city. The city had 25,200 when I was a kid but now only has about 14,000, since most of the manufacturing has closed and moved and most of the young didn't stay around to live in a dying, rust-belt city in western Pennsylvania. That being said, our youth was straight out of the "Leave it to Beaver" television show of the 60s. We truly had a idyllic childhood in small town America. No crime, no worries, just big enough to have sports and other good things to do and parents who were really parents to us. In fact, each of our parents were parents to our friends. Everyone looked out for everyone else and life was truly very good. I wouldn't trade my childhood for anyone else's anywhere in the world. I wish my children would have been lucky enough to have a childhood like mine.
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| A Dinner a Kid Would Never be Allowed to Have! |
After arriving and before settling in my room this evening, I decided to go out for dinner. Now, I've been eating pretty good, but tonight would be different. I wasn't really hungry but I wanted something tasty--something a parent would never allow his or her child to have for dinner; something that is a special favorite of mine. Heck, I couldn't do this as a kid, so I would eat a Dairy Queen Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard tonight for dinner! Who is here to stop me? Why not indulge? Why eat healthy every day, day after day, week after week? Okay, I did talk myself into it and it was delicious. I'm glad I did.
Tomorrow I will arise early and head south then east to my home. Hopefully, if all goes as planned, I should be home well before supper. I anticipate good weather.
Today we/I drove about 450 miles. We drove through Ohio, into Michigan, out of Michigan, again through Ohio and into Pennsylvania. Enjoy!
Thanks for looking.
Dennis Mook
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