Road Trip Day #2 Nashville

Happy In Oxford, Ohio

It's just after 6:00 here in Oxford, Ohio, pitch black of course and the coffee is brewing.  We are staying at friends from college, Mary Lou and Joe, and this is at least the third or fourth time we have stayed with them on our road trips out West.  They are great hosts, so we keep coming back. 

We left the lake around 8:30 and it was gray and wet for our first couple of hours, until we got off #71 and headed on back roads, taking # 36/37 through Deleware, Ohio Wesleyan, to Springfield, where we picked up #70 again before headed south to Oxford near the Indiana line.  We used to go this way when we would take our daughter Jill to Wittenberg University in the 1990's, so it was fun to be back on a road we recognized.  Our road through the backroads was pleasant, flat and either brown stubble or green hay fields, the fields seeming to stretch to the horizon, real farm country separated by an occasional small town.  Our GPS said we would arrive around 3:45 and we were in Oxford just before 4:00 even by going on the back roads. 

When we pulled into Lou and Joe's home,  they were in their garage, as a friend was helping to fix their garage door, which, to Lou's dismay, she nudged while backing out.  Last time, it was a problem with the toilet, so we felt right at home.  We immediately settled down on their couches to discuss important matters, our kids, grandchildren, our travels and of course, reminiscing about the good old days when both Joe and I played basketball at Ohio University and were roommates and fraternity brothers.  Joe uncorked the first bottle of wine and we sat talking until dinner, around 7:30 when we finally realized we were hungry.  Joe mentioned they were having trouble with their fireplace, that they were having someone come out on Wednesday.  Evie asked if they had checked the battery in the box.  Joe was not really aware that there was a box, so with Evie, they found it, changed the batteries and voila, it worked, saving them eighty bucks.  Our stay was paid for!  Then, all of us were having trouble getting on the wifi, so I suggested to Lou to unplug the router, then reboot the system and that worked as well.  Now they owe us!
 

Our Good Friends, Joe and Lou

We had a great dinner, barbecued pork sandwiches, piled high with a sweet/sour coleslaw and a bean dish, followed by Lou's homemade apple pie with ice cream.  We could hardly get up from the table we were so full, happily so.  We then talked until 10:30, finishing off our third bottle of wine and we never seemed to run out of things to talk about.  And though we had not seen each other since May, we took right up with where we left off, as if we had seen each other last weekend.  By the way, they have lived in Oxford since 1971, where Joe coached at the University and Mary Lou taught.  They have a great home, comfortable and situated near the Miami University campus so they can literally walk to the campus and take advantage of their facilities.  And they, like us, spend much of the year visiting their grandchildren in both Connecticut and New Jersey.  In fact, they will be off to Connecticut for Thanksgiving, like us, except they won't take a ten day vacation first

Homemade Apple Pie

We are driving to Nashville this morning, a four and a half hour drive as long as we have no traffic problems.