Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Country Roads


Six hours to Mom's on Monday, six hours back today. Henry the 1990 Ford Taurus performed admirably, as we all expected him to. Though it iced on us in Pennsylvania. I doubt he was any happier about that than I was.

Personal space is a wonderful thing, and at Mom's, I get to stay in the Fonzie apartment. That is, the mini-pad above the garage. The house wi-fi reaches the Fonzie apartment, so it's no problem for me to wake up early, make some coffee, and talk to Kuwait.

Mom lives in the mountains of western Virginia, in a small resort town above the Shenandoah Valley. The surrounding area is populated by a mixture of nature lovers, rednecks, urban refugees, and rural gentry. The resort itself, called Bryce, has a golf course and a ski slope. It's a few hours away from Washington, DC.

Driving down there triggers a lot of memories, both from when I was a kid and we'd visit places like Dinosaurland and Skyline Drive on family holidays, and from just a few years ago, when Turbo the Aussie and I took Henry through every back road we could find as we explored the region in 2002. Back then, we had Mom's cabin to ourselves as Mom and her husband Frank still lived in the DC suburbs at the time.

This morning, I casually mentioned to Yasir that I was in the mountains. He demanded a photo. But I'm not the photographer of the family. Mom is. I snapped the shot above from my car, but if you want to see lovely photos of the area around Mom's house, better look at her blog instead of mine.

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