Why I Live in a Desert

Babs and I got back last week from a ten day trip to the South. Our son Scott had been transferred to Birmingham, AL and I volunteered to drive to drive the U-Haul full of all his worldly belongings. Since I was a truck driver in a previous life I figured hauling the stuff for a family of nine would be no sweat, especially since it would be my fourth trip that way in two years. Then Babs decided to come along. This woman detested driving the 40 miles to Benson, AZ when our kids were living there and thought a trip to Phoenix was absolute death. But, by coming with me she would be able to visit our kids at Ft Campbell, evidently enough motivation to go cross country in truck with me.

Though skeptical at first I was pleasantly surprised by how well she did on the 2,000 mile trek. She was a more-than-capable navigator and certainly kept me alive by not allowing me to over drive like I did on the other trips. Instead of driving straight through, she convinced me to make it a three day journey. Tumacacori, NM and Lonoke, AR are fine places to spend the night. I'm sure she was impressed by my breaking out in song for no particular reason.

After a night at Jer & Linda's place on Ft Campbell, KY, we borrowed their Corolla and headed for Birmingham. Let me tell you something about Birmingham. It's weird. It's the biggest city in Alabama but you can't tell because it's almost completely hidden by forests and hills. Green until you want to vomit. I had the GPS with me while Babs drove the car so I was depending on Olivia (the Australian chick GPS voice) to guide me to Scott & Suzie's new home. By the way, we called the GPS voice Olivia because we couldn't remember the other Australian chick's name (Nicole Kidman). Somehow she was confused and sent me the the opposite direction of his house so I had to turn the truck around in a space the size of a postage stamp. Major correction but successful none the less. We then began to unload the truck.

Now this is why I live in a desert. HUMIDITY. Ok, the lack thereof. Heat in the desert is HOT. Heat in the HUMID South, SUCKS! I had forgotten how it feels to sweat just because you are alive. Breathing. No concept of working up a sweat. Sweat is like Wal-Mart there. We did manage to get all the stuff into the house though it did take two days. It was tough to leave there knowing it would be quite some time before we see them again.

Jer was at the W.C. Handy Jazz Festival in Florence, AL so we stopped there on our way to Ft Campbell and got to see him perform with the jazz ensemble. They were great and I realized that the tuba player is the hardest worker in a jazz ensemble. It was fun to hear him do some barbershop quartet too. We took the direct route to Ft Campbell on mostly two lane roads with beautiful scenery all the way.

We had fun at Jer & Linda's home then flew back on Monday. Until we got on the plane, we didn't realize we were sitting in different rows, from both Nashville to Denver and Denver to Tucson. Scott bought the tickets. May he thought we'd had enough time sitting together...