Being A Tourist in Your Backyard

Yesterday, as the result of an exciting new freelance opportunity, I had an excuse to spend the night downtown in my hometown. The NYC trip of April had started to fade into “far away” and frankly with the vast amount of highway construction along the one getaway route out of town -- Hwy 61 -- makes a quick day trip anywhere outside of the county anything but quick. Schedules have been consistently chaotic so we’ve pretty much hunkered down in the woods.

Time for a change.

Last night, even though I was only an hour away from the cabin and about five minutes away from my parents’ place, I was anxious for the excuse to shake things up a bit.

And the very best part was that my friend Kati agreed to be my travel companion. Since I sometimes look at as Andy as he walks through the door at the end of the day and think, “oh, do you live here too?”, you can only imagine what effect being uber busy and living an hour away from town has had on friendships. There was some much needed catching up to take care of.

We made the most of the time we had. For supper, we cooked up some wonderful homemade pizza. Then, once I was sufficiently full of cheese, pepperoni, and root beer, Kati suggested we go spend the rest of the evening playing some pick up soccer. While I was playing, I felt like I was 16 again, albeit, missing a bit of that handy hand-eye coordination I had back then in my soccer playing days. Today I feel like I’m about 60. Ya know, who needs knees anyway?

This morning, after a fitful night of sleep in a strange location, we headed down the street for a bit of breakfast. Afterward, although there were plenty of things I could have been doing, we opted to play tourist a little bit more. There are a couple new businesses in town and although I’d written preview pieces about both businesses' openinga, I hadn't been inside yet to get a glimpse of the final product. We poked around in those two stores, along with a few other gift shops, then headed out to the lighthouse.

In the end, we decided if you were really, truly a tourist in this town, it wouldn’t be half bad. I guess that's not a surprising conclusion to reach when the skies are blue, the conversation is pleasant, and there's nothing that truly needs to be done except enjoy the warm sun and gentlest of breezes.