Hello all,
We have probably bored you with all manner of trivia of our travels so I thought I would extend the streak in a new direction and talk about what it feels like to be gone for two months....or how I expect it will be when I / we are actually gone two months instead of the two weeks we have actually been gone. The particular focus will be discussions in the car between my wife and I.
My wife and I find that faced with the seemingless endless Dakota and Wyoming prairies, we actually interact on a different level that is not task driven, not driven by her work or my work [since I have none], or by what the kids are doing in their own lives since we rarely hear the minutia that adds meaning to the conversations. The discussions, often light hearted, occasionally not, often tangents to what we finally get around to saying, are surprising, warm, maddening and more. This is a bit of a surprise as we've been married for 33 years now and thought we had pretty well covered the waterfront of possible discussions. I know that I have had an epiphany or two along the way. I suspect that she has as well.
Interestingly enough, this driving and talking thing worked really well with our children when driving them to and from various sports/games that they had over the years. Somehow it seemed easier when they were facing forward and not at you and really had to have second thoughts about leaping from a car doing 60 miles an hour on the highway in order to escape the conversation. Perhaps this ought to be tried for more people who really need to discuss things. Imagine, you could invite your troubled boss out for a 60 mph ride for an hour or so to 'sort things out'. Make sure you are the one driving though. Or perhaps that young thug who is terrorizing your neighborhood or the grumpy old man who always kicks your newspaper into the puddle.
Who knows? It might even work on a global level with Bush and Putin! They would of course have to do this on Air Force One or whatever the Russian equivalent is. In that case, to escape, they would need air tanks and a mask which would be a certain giveaway that they were not engaged in the conversation.
At any rate, on to Yellowstone in the morning. Hope you try this technique and that you let me know if it works for you. I'll cut you in on the profits.
Matt
Matt
