A Day in the Life: Nashville Redux

I am not sure I ever officially said good bye to Nashville because when I left, I knew that I was coming back. There was a scheduled reunion of the fellows to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the fellowship in April 2013. In some ways I am sure it eased the transition out of Nashville as I could tell everyone I would see them in less than a year. And man does time fly by.

Unfortunately (and fortunately) the rest of the family couldn't make the trip with me. As always I was conflicted about leaving my family behind, but lets be real. Traveling solo is like a day at the spa. You are free of the enormous amount of luggage and extra stuff needed to bring the little tikes on the plane. Your lap is free, you can board the plane with a cup of coffee in your hand and some magazines to peruse. An hour delay on the tarmac? No problem (although it did force me to occupy the only restroom on the plane for 25 minutes while I hand pumped. TMI? too bad).

I crammed every minute of my free time with something to do. I landed, got my rental car and drove straight to my friend Kate's house to get a run in with my running buddy. Unfortunately I was all off with the time change, it being the middle of the afternoon and 85+ and humid. Oh, and I haven't really gotten a whole lot of running in either. I almost died about 3 times I felt so out of shape and winded, but fortunately Kate was a great sport about it. Of course it promptly dropped about 40 degrees the following day....After that ran quickly over to chat with Carolyn for a bit and then cleaned up for dinner at JTs house to start the reunion weekend. Makers and ginger, yes please! Not driving, thank you! Pump and dump since I can't bring all the liquid gold home. Lots of fun.

The remainder of the weekend went pretty much like that, squeezing in visits as best I coould between the very tight schedule of the reunion course. It was a perfect mix of work/friends/free time and I really did a ton in my 57 hrs away from home. And it was a lot more sad to leave Nashville this time around. Part "time heals all wounds" and part "I really like Nashville as a city". In hindsight, our quality of life theren (outside of work) was very good. And shit, what you can get for a house down there is amazing compared to the places we are looking at now. But don't get me wrong, if I hit one more red light on my way home from the airport, I was about to melt down. As fun as it was to get away and have a little me time, I couldn't take one more second away from my family. Once I was en route home, nothing was going to stop me until I made it there.