On the Road Again...

We’re on the road again…driving to Lawrence Kansas for an interview with Elizabeth Asiedu at University of Kansas. We bought a GPS system and a lighter converter so I can type from the passenger seat. Pretty fun since my new computer is so tiny it could be called a “thigh top”.

Driving through this great big country is pretty inspiring. It presents a striking juxtaposition to what we saw in Africa. We have this perfect highway system dotted here and there with sections of construction (which I will never again complain about…without it the interstate roads would be as utterly useless as they are in Uganda) and acres and acres and acres of perfectly groomed farmland with the occasional red barn or grain silo.

I’ve always had fantasies about living on a little farm, most likely because I’m zooming by at 75 miles per hour. Anything looks romantic when you are moving by at top speed and only imagining that life for 15 seconds. Someday we will have a little cottage with a big garden and orchard and a little pony pasture, and that will be close enough I think. I wouldn’t want to milk cows or collect chicken eggs or anything like that. Just like that scene in “Marie Antoinette” where the servant comes along and collects the real egg covered in mud and excrement and replaces it with a freshly washed white one for the queen to collect in a fit of naturalistic ecstasy with her toddler. I have a feeling the fantasy is a lot easier to live with than the reality.

We had a great visit in Chicago. We stayed with Nick and Dave in our old apartment at 1819 and did all our favorite Chicago things; Deep dish at Giordano's, Cubs game, Dilly Lily, Splendor, a double doozie at Sweet Mandie B’s, a facial at Aveda Institute, a wild night of Polka and German Beer at the Glunz Bavarian Haus, lots of fort making and rough housing with Gabriel and Samara, good cheap Thai food with Chris, his lady Sophia, Maggie and Katie. We saw old friends, visited our favorite old haunts and felt ready to leave again. We can visit again anytime but now we are making a life somewhere else...on the road.