Times are Changing

I rarely go to the grocery store with my wife but today I didn’t have anything better to do so I tagged along.

We weren’t in the HEB Plus for five minutes when I ran into a former coworker and then five minutes later my wife, and I ran into some old friends we haven’t seen in years. We reminisced about 20 minutes and ended it by acknowledging that every day that passes we get new aches and pains.

I’ve noticed that my yearly seminars in Austin, Houston or Corpus Christi were becoming harder and harder to attend. Ten years ago, getting up to 5:00 in the morning and driving to one of those cities was a piece of cake, especially the one in Corpus Christi. Nowadays, I have to pack my meds and not forget to take them.My peripheral vision and night driving skills are not what they were,so I rarely put it to test. 

This year because of previous appointments, Austin, Texas was the only two-day seminar that I could attend.

My initial plan was to leave Victoria no later than 5:00 AM to make the Thursday 8:00 AM registration. A couple of weeks ago, we drove to the IH 35 location, so I wouldn’t have any predawn surprises.

We had lunch with my daughter this afternoon, and the subject of my trip came up. She told me that I could leave tomorrow and make it a two-night stay because I'm not as young as I used to be, and that I shouldn’t be driving alone in the dark. She said that the roads were dark and foggy conditions make that route even more dangerous. I told her that I would be fine, so we continued eating our meal and started talking about something else. As soon as we told our daughter good-bye and got to our car, I could feel my wife's brain waves working overtime. That’s when she told me that it would be a lot safer if I left tomorrow and took my time. We went over the pros and cons, and the pros won without a fight. I’ll be leaving tomorrow at 1:30 PM, and hopefully I’ll be back Friday around 7:30 PM, making it only a couple of hours of driving in the dark.

It could be just me, but I’ve been hearing about automobile accidents a lot more these days. I wonder how much we could attribute that to people not taking the extra hours or day to drive to their destination. I know Victoria is growing (a lot more cars) which might contribute, but I think we have more than our share of fatal accidents. I immediately look at the ages of those involved in accidents and found that a lot of them are 55 years and older.

Well until Saturday or a day or two after ........ this blog will have to do.