A Lost Weekend

I went away for the weekend and turned off access to email, twitter, voice mail and phone calls. I also avoided looking at the news on TV or reading the news online. It was a reprieve from the normal (?) life of a wannabe journalist known as a blogger.

It was a weekend excursion to an old, friendly place which would give one pause from touching the real world. It is a place that, for the most part, is lost in time, a step back to where the technologically non-existent 19th century coexists with the technology of the 21st.

Over the years, I have gone there to "get away from it all", four hours by car from home, far enough to say "I got away" but close enough to make it home in the event of an emergency. In years past, it had been a trip to sightsee the area and eat, oh yes, EAT the local foods like it was Thanksgiving. Now, both because of the surgeries and my age, of course, I can no longer do that.

But I love the Amish Country in Lancaster, PA because we spent many summer vacations, weekend jaunts and even stopovers from our Florida trips when my children were kids. We always found it to be a place to get the batteries recharged. It has nice memories where we took some of those vacations with friends, because our families were close.

But now, as with all things, times change everything. We haven't been there much over the last few years because, as John Lennon said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." Instead, it has been difficult at best to make the trip, due to life's obstacles.

And, I had forgotten how bad the trip coming home was. From the the time we hit the New Jersey Turnpike until we crossed the Queens-Nassau County line, a distance that should have been done in 90 minutes, we were in bumper to bumper traffic for 3 hours.

So now, I am home, ready to tackle another week of news, politics and all the other issues that will keep our interest high for about 6 hours at a time. Batteries are on full, brain is refocused, fingers at the ready.

Ready? Set? Go!