I never traveled much with my family when I was younger. We had two main destinations, one to South Georgia (Homerville, Manor, and Waycross) to visit my aunts, uncles, and cousins, and the second one to Loveless, a community in Lincoln County, where my great-aunts lived. We once visited my uncle in Florida when I was two or three, but despite living in a border state, I have never traveled there since then. My biggest adventure as an early teen was going to West Virginia with my mother when I was eleven. Along the way, we made stops in Kentucky and drove through Pennsylvania and Ohio, staying at the homes of cousins with whom my mother was raised.
I didn’t strike out on my own until I was in my mid-twenties, but I made the most of it by moving to New York to attend graduate school in 1989. Looking back, it ended up being a five-year vacation, even though I lived in Brooklyn and worked in Manhattan throughout my time there. One year, I flew to Texas to visit my brother and drove to Upstate New York once to hook up with a friend from the Internet, but otherwise didn’t travel much outside the five boroughs except for holidays when I flew back to Atlanta. Following my time in New York, I returned to my family’s home in East Point where I lived until purchasing my condo in Doraville.
Recently, when I’ve had to work away from home, I’ve mastered quite a few new skills: learning to cook in hotel microwaves; learning exactly how far I can drive without a break (seventeen hours is my limit); making sure I’m on my feet early enough to get to the job on time while still getting adequate sleep. While most of my travel has been job related, I have also been checking out historical sites near my home. I went to FDR’s Little White House in Warm Springs, visited Andersonville, the site of an infamous Confederate prison camp, and traveled to Jimmy Carter’s boyhood home in Plains. Below are a few of the highlights from some of my stops along the way.
I have to say, for someone who has never liked to travel much, I’ve gotten rather good at it. I can usually pack in half an hour or less, and being on the road so much, my gas mileage has increased substantially, up to fifty-seven miles per gallon on a recent trip. I’m giving my twelve-year-old Honda Insight quite a workout. I’m constantly refining my routine to lower the number of bags I carry and to optimize my time on the road.
