An hour has 60 minutes; a day has 24 of those hours and a year has 365 or 366 of those days.  A mile has 5280 feet.  Time and distance are consistent unless they are preceded by “seems like” or “feels like” in which case everything changes.

The “seems like” factor in distance is greatly affected by road conditions. It is more difficult to put a finger on what makes a period of time “seem like” yesterday or forever, it is probably best explained by example.  In July ’97 I made my last business trip for the U.S. Air Force, it was a trip to the Pacific Northwest; not a bad place to spend a couple weeks in July. It was one of the best business trips I ever had. Fifteen years later it seems like it was a very long time ago and I remember very few details.

The week after returning from that trip Sharyl and I took two little blond headed five year olds to their first major league baseball game.  We saw the Yankees and Rangers; we were all Ranger fans.  The boys later became Yankee fans Sharyl and I always wondered where we went wrong.  I remember every detail of that trip; it seems like it was yesterday. Why the difference, and it isn’t always the good times that you remember vividly as if they just happened.

Sometimes when you get 50 miles down the road it seems like you just left home, other times it seems like you have been on the road forever I think this is usually related to road conditions. Maybe you are riding the concrete four lane ribbons known as the interstate system that have cris-crossed the country since the Eisenhower administration, time passes pretty fast if you are fortunate and can avoid the construction zones and rush hour in the big towns.  Heaven forbid if the only access to your destination is a rough gravel road; a short trip can seem like it takes forever.  These are the extremes; we all travel a lot of city streets and two-lane asphalt in between the interstate and the gravel. A mile is 5280 ft regardless of the road you are traveling; it just doesn’t seem that way.  For whatever reason all those carefree miles on the interstate seem to blend together, but the short trip down the bumpy gravel road leaves a vivid memory.

The highway of life is similar in a lot of ways to those concrete, asphalt or gravel ribbons I bored you with in the previous paragraph.  I am cautiously optimistic that I have found a little strip of narrow asphalt after a long trip down the bumpy and sometimes very muddy gravel road.

To quote Charles Kuralt of the old CBS show “On The Road”; “I can see the road is bending. I wonder what’s around that bend”. Unlike the concrete ribbons that Charles referred to, there is always a bend in the road of life that prevents us from seeing what lies ahead, and yes I wonder what’s around that bend, more asphalt, a little asphalt and back to the bumpy gravel or could there be an interstate around that bend. I think I could handle an uneventful run down life’s interstate for several miles, but right now this asphalt seems pretty good and I expect some intermittent stretches of the rough gravel.  I think I may see the interstate again but it is still many miles away.

As you can tell from reading this; it has been an unusual couple weeks.  I hope you kind of understood what I tried to say.  Please keep me in your prayers.

Good Night and God Bless.

Dave