Rain, Nice & Driving

View of I-30 after a slow start has eased up

The drive felt never ending. Of course, it would be so, I was after all doing 10mph on a 70mph road. The maximum speed I reached today the entire route was close to 55mph. It was slow and boring. Mind kept wandering in and out of past, present and future, I was emoting to the songs on the radio or better still sang along with a few to stay away and focused. The darkness of the morning and the pounding rain took me back to the drive from Nice to somewhere just past Monaco.

It was still dark but the alarms were blaring. We had woken up to beating rain. The sky was lit brightly by the intermittent lightning and thunder roared all around us. For a few minutes I wondered if my decision to leave early towards Roma was a very good one. We climbed down three flights of stairs as the elevator had been turned off in the apartment (saving energy, the French way) and got soaking wet while loading into the car. 6 wet adults and 3 barely awake kids started out driving in the winding roads of Nice heading towards Roma. Brother-in-Law was driving and I was navigating. Within ten minutes the car was silent and it was just the two of us awake. The rain seemed relentless and the darkness did not leave us until it was close to 10 in the morning.

When the clouds parted, we were already in Italy getting out of one of the many tunnels. Mountains on one side and blue ocean on the other. Villages crowding up as if they wanted to all be in that one little valley. Tunnel after tunnel and valley after valley we drove through many villages until there were no more mountains but flat Tuscan land. The drive is etched in my memory as one of the most beautiful routes I have ever taken.

The drive was divided in to parts. Parts where we enjoyed the beauty and the parts where we wanted to get out of the misery of driving on boring flat empty land. The part where we had amazing coffee and the part where we were trying really hard to find a place to eat. In the end, it is always worth it. Apparently, everything is.

Like today, when I made it into work after an hour and forty-five minutes of driving, it was worth it. The darkness still has not left us and neither has the rain but the snow has started to drift by gently now 60 miles away at my home. Winter in Dallas, I love every bit of you. You are temperamental, you are 70 degrees on one day and 17 the next, you can snow and also do the rain but you do ice the best. You constantly keep us on our toes wondering what your next step is making every winter fresh and leaving lots of new memories to hold on to.

Cold, Tired and Wet from Rain 

ART