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Travel:

Verb, -eled, -el·ing or (especially British) -elled, -el·ling

Noun, adjective verb (used without object)

1. To go from one place to another, as by car, train, plane, or ship; take a trip, journey--to travel for pleasure.
2. To move or go from one place or point to another
3. To proceed or advance in any way
4. To go from place to place as a representative of a business firm
5. To associate or consort: He travels in a wealthy crowd

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about traveling. Not sure why, but suspect it has something to do with the impending holiday season. I cannot believe it; we are five weeks away from Christmas. The days are barreling through, toward the end of the year, at the speed of lightning, scary.

Anyway, I have been talking about traveling in “my mind” and that has set my brain in motion—I am now looking at every place I go to as a “travel” destination; convenient, actually. There is a good chance you will be reading more of these stories, as the year-ends; because I will be moving from one point to another very often.

Yesterday morning I got up early, thought I would head out of the house--with the intent of going to the park or the beach; take some pictures of birds, the water, boats—or whatever got my eye’s attention; then come back home to write a blog post or two. Well, that was the plan. Before I could get going, I heard some noise outside the door, peeked through the window to see what the racket was and suddenly—there it was, a change of plans. The County, in its infinite wisdom had decided to replace the aluminum culvert pipes around our neighborhood, with concrete ones, and today was our turn. That is fine, but could they have let me know ahead of time?

Not being one to miss an opportunity, I quickly got my Canon out; took some pictures, and went out to talk to the work crew, let them know I might be talking about them in my blog. The men were a good-natured bunch—all they said was “as long as what I had to say about them was good, it would be okay with them”. My response—“it would be all good—as long as I could get out of my driveway”. No problem there, they graciously moved all the heavy trucks and equipment, and I was on my way—to the spot I originally had in mind.

It was a beautiful day, at Gilchrist Park, sunny and bright. There were people out having lunch and reading books under the pavilion. Others were just sitting around enjoying the weather. I got into easy conversation with a woman who reminded me that there will be music on the park Thursday night. I made a mental note of that and went back home.

In addition, I now have added respect for the job those men do every day. It was nearly 90 degrees outside, while they plugged away at their duties. Tough job, but somebody has to do it, right? Glad it is not me.

On any given day, life throws surprises your way, especially in our neighborhood. One day you step outside to find turtles sunning in your backyard, and yet another day you see a bobcat chasing some other animal. Nevertheless, you take it all in stride; life is what you make it, so you learn to enjoy it!

This blog post was first published at http://chicawrites.com by Marcia Clarke