We've said it before and we'll say it again: travel is no pleasure.
Why, then, is so much of our life spent on the road?
It is an odd conjunction of circumstances, none of which you will find interesting.
For one thing, our contractor Odillio has been bring the Old Newman Place up to code for so long that they've actualy changed the code twice since we started. Ha, ha!
No, seriously, we knew when we bought the place that it was only "turn-key" in the sense that you could put a key in the lock (if you wished) and turn it, but the door would probably fall away from you and the wall fall over you, like the old Buster Keaton gag. And the rest of the neighborhood would laugh their tails off but you yourself would not be so happy.
For the past four years we only took care of emergencies. Then our lamented Mom left us a certain amount of money and we started re-doing the house.
At certain points it has become necessary for us to leave the house. Sometimes this is because we are beginning to exhale, as well as inhale, plaster dust.
Sometimes it is because, as much as we love Odillio and his crew, we feel that if we hear one more Spanish pop-gospel tune in the middle of the night (9 AM), we might run amok with a staple gun in our mouth, and it won't end prettily.
We also want to travel now because we have rarely travelled in the past.
When we were a child, our parents loved traveling and, even more inexplicably, they loved traveling en famille. This, although we were the child most likely to need a potty break halfway through a traffic jam in the Lincoln Tunnel, and our brother became hysterical with fury if his London Broil touched his peas.
As we grew older, we hated travel more and more. This was because we were constantly being sent places. Camp in Canada. College in Central New York. Our Brother's College in Illinois, to disengage him from the hands of a gold-digger.
When we found ourself ensconced in a damp bedroom off the Gloucester Road because someone felt we should study abroad, we re-enacted that scene from "Gone with the Wind", except this time God was witnessing the fact that we would never travel against our own wishes, ever again.
Therefore, on Thursday we are taking a train to Washington, DC.
Former President with an unnamed friend.
