Georgia On Our Minds

En Route to The Soldier Museum at Ft Benning

The Soldier Museum At Ft. Benning

Family reunioning in Columbus, GA this summer has been in the works for 11 months.

The reunion wheels started to turn last August when Kirk and I joined his mother, Mary, in Leesburg, VA for Nathan’s wedding, Kirk’s brother’s son. What could be a better idea than to celebrate Mary’s 90th birthday by having all of our kids, their spouses, and our grandkids + Patrick and Pam and their 3 adult kids + Danielle, Nathan’s wife rendezvous in Columbus, GA. The last time “the cousins”, minus Bryan and Mandy, were all together was January 2000 for Kirk’s Dad’s funeral; Bryan and Mandy were honeymooning in Cancun. And, of course, there were no grandkids in 2000.

Mary loves to celebrate and 90 is an awesome reason to do just that; so, she invited 350 friends to her party scheduled for Saturday, July 16th. 275 have responded “Yes! Of course I’ll be there”.

We arrived a couple of days ahead of the traveling entourage and how good it was to land for a few days. We’ve been homeless for 17 days; traveled in 18 states for a total of 3,100 miles; and have 82 more travel days and an estimated 10,000 more miles before finally arriving in Tucson October 1st.

It felt great to unload the car, wash and vacuum it, change it’s oil, and triage our duffle bags for items we now know we will not be needing the next 82 days.

I’ve finally been able to stretch out my legs on the bike after a series of 20 mile rides hopping out of the car and back in again. Today was a fun 60 mile ride from Columbus to Hamilton GA. Good heat acclimatization opportunity with the heat index at 101.