Traveling Fool

So we just spent the last couple of weeks traveling. We did a road trip from southern California to Louisiana and back. You'd be surprised at the variations in landscape that occur in that limited space. Long roads through varied deserts (yes, deserts vary). Unique mountain structures. There are some mountains in southern California that look exactly like massive dump trucks offloaded piles of boulders and some in Arizona that have impossibly balanced rocks. Then there are the vast forests of eastern Texas and Louisiana, a radical change from the deserts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and the rest of southern Texas. One is struck with the sheer size of the country and wonder how anyone could have predicted back in the 70's that the world would be overpopulated by the year 2000. Apparently those guys didn't get out much.

The more interesting variation was the people. Southern Californians tend to keep to themselves. They aren't hostile or anything, but neither do they tend to acknowledge your presence. Contrast that with the walk my wife and I took in an Alexandria, Louisiana neighborhood where the occupants of cars driving by waved a friendly greeting and one neighbor came out and invited to have us join him in a jog.

Going across this southern portion of the country, I got a glimpse of our Border Patrol dollars at work. We had to have gone through half a dozen Border Patrol inspection points. In only two (actually, only one, since we went through it twice) was there actual activity. In this one in Arizona (both times through), there was an agent with a dog randomly sniffing at cars and another making eye contact with each and every driver before waving them through. In the rest, it was ... nonsense. In most cases there was a stop, but no agents there. Instead they were all clustered off to the side someplace ignoring the vehicles passing through. In one it was actually appalling what we saw. An agent was there in the inspection booth, hand in the air with a "go ahead" motion swirling around. She never once looked up from the book she was reading. You could have passed through with a bus labeled "Illegal Aliens Bus Lines" and she wouldn't have seen it. She was intent on the romance she was reading or whatever. Now, I have a great deal of respect for the job that the Border Patrol does, but this didn't exactly inspire me.

And I have discovered the real money-making job to get into: road work. Everywhere we went there were roads under construction, destruction, repair, rerouting, something, all the time. The poor you always have with you, but road work will be an eternity of employment. But I am not actually complaining. Much of those that were not under repair should have been.

What was really remarkable was the people on this trip. We visited with Holly and her husband and the grandkids. That was nice. In the Dallas area we visited with cousins in Plano, third cousins twice removed in Flower Mound (yeah, we did the math on that one), old friends from California who had moved to McKinney. In Louisiana we got to spend several days with my grandfather and his wife. Now, as I get older, "old age" seems to move, but I think these two qualify no matter what at 90 and 88. I was reminded of my own mortality, realizing that one never knows from one day to the next who will be here tomorrow. But most of all it was the people on the trip itself. My wife and I enjoyed the traveling company of my parents. These are godly people, very generous and loving and a joy to be with. My mother and I enjoy a highly unusual relationship in that we share a passion for God. Many of our discussions were on Him and His Word. How many sons have that privilege with their mothers?

One other observation/question: What is up with gas prices? When I started this trip, I paid $2.29 a gallon for regular gas here in Arizona. Now, comparing apples to apples, my last fill up was $2.67 a gallon. That's a lot of change in a short time. Worse yet, in California it was $2.97 a gallon (at the cheapest spot). (Most places I saw were $3.19 a gallon or more.) So what's with this "cross the California line and save 30 cents a gallon"? Oh, wait, I get it. California pumps and processes their own oil. No, wait ... that should make it cheaper there than anywhere else. I'm telling you, folks, I just don't get it. This kind of stuff makes me lean toward the conspiracy theory approach.

Well, it was a good trip. I thank God for traveling mercies (a phrase my mom and I discussed at one point ... and you might hear about in the coming days). I thank God for family. I thank God for home. And it is a very nice country in which He had me be born. Thanks for that, too.