A Travelin' Man

In 1961, Ricky Nelson released the song, “Travelin’ Man”. Part of the lyrics were, I’m a travelin’ man and I’ve made a lot of stops, all over the world. This last September, I felt like I was a travelin’ man, who made at least three stops, all over the US. September was a good month for me. It had been almost fifteen months since I had major back surgery and I was starting to feel like my old self. By this time I had finally recovered from a recurrence of a bout of acid reflux caused by a dental procedure that I had the previous January. Did I mention that I don't like going to the dentist!

I had traveled to three different places in September. The first, a short trip, was to the central coast of California. Normally, my wife takes our two Labrador retrievers to a lake located near us so they could go swimming. She would take them swimming three or four times a week. This year, because of the drought, there was an infestation of toxic algae, and she couldn’t take them to the lake. Swimming is one thing that labs just love to do. So, we decided to take a short vacation and we traveled to the coast so our labs could go swimming. They went swimming in the morning, they went swimming in the afternoon and by the evening all of us were quite tired. Our labs had a great little vacation.

After we returned home, we received a phone call that the car we had ordered was ready to be picked up. Last April, we put down a deposit on a Hyundai Ioniq 5, an electric vehicle, at a dealership in Connecticut. I ended up taking a red-eye flight on a Friday night, arriving in Connecticut on Saturday morning and that afternoon I began my trip driving back home in my new car. Why buy a car in Connecticut and how was the trip driving it back home - that is material for an upcoming blog post.

On the third and final trip that month, my wife and I drove to Montana. In July, Nancy received a phone call from our dogs' breeder informing her that there was going to be another litter of puppies and since she was now retired, she wasn’t sure how much longer she was going to be breeding Labrador retrievers. We decided if there was a yellow female in the litter we would be interested. At the end of September we ended up driving to Three Forks, Montana, to bring home our new puppy, Sally. The drive to Montana took about twenty hours. We stayed there overnight, picked up the new puppy in the morning and began our return trip home. The return trip took almost twenty-three hours, since we had to make some extra stops for Sally.

I was a travelin’ man and I’ve made a lot of stops all over the US. What a September!