Took a Little Trip...

My niece got married this weekend up in western North Carolina and we all made the trip to be there with her. The wedding was grand, the bride was beautiful, she and the groom make as handsome a couple as you will ever see and the reception was to die for. The best part of it all was the chance to get together with family and friends. I had lived in Asheville for seven years and the place has gone through some highly visible changes in the nearly eighteen years since I moved away. One thing that hasn’t changed much is the magnificent views… and the peaceful, satisfying feeling I get when I see any of them. Susan did a great job of capturing one of them on this trip…

(click to enlarge)

I took advantage of the opportunity of being out of town to check out the new Mac on several aspects of “away” use. By that I mean making sure that all the wireless settings and email authorizations and such were set to work properly away from home. They did fine.

From where we live, we cannot get to Asheville without going through Atlanta. Since we chose not to leave until after school got out on Friday, we knew that we would be tangling with the Atlanta rush hour. (In fairness to Susan, in the preceding sentence, “we” should rightfully be “I”… she has found it is easier to give in to me on the subject of taking the kids out of school early.)

The traffic met our expectations and we probably spent an extra 10 to15 minutes getting through downtown as compared to non-rush hour times. Gwinnett County on the northeast side, however, was nothing less than horrendous. We spent the better part of an hour in stop and crawl traffic, rarely getting above 10 mph. It’s normally a four-or-so hour trip, but it wound up taking us nearly seven hours this time.

Still, I prefer that to making the kids deal with make-up schoolwork. Also, in comparison, the grandness of the rest of the weekend more than made up for the relatively minor hassle of getting there. Being there for the blessed event was worth whatever it took.