2008-11-30 and 12-01

Mick and I awoke early and began getting ready for the trip to Nebraska, having decided to do our Morning Offering in the car. So we satisfied ourselves with just the meditation and prayer before Mick began finalizing the packing and I wrote my journal entries, had my chapel time and packed up the computer and printer for travel.

It is always a wrench to leave home. We snuggled with Chloe, Pickwick and Dan D. Lion and got away by 9:30 a.m. There was a chilly rain to bid us good-bye as we left Kentucky for Indiana, then Illinois and then Missouri. The air was heavy with rain and the skies were lowering, with the cloud cover too thick to permit any sense of the shapes of the clouds. This made all the colors dark and sober. It felt, as we approached the plains after crawling though St. Louis in heavy traffic, as though we were driving on the floor of a great sea, through water instead of air.

Stanley, like all cars, enjoyed driving in the wet and Mick and I were conversing and enjoying our morning when a young dog about the size of a greyhound but with the look of a golden retriever ran straight at our car from across the expressway. He was looking neither right nor left but had an air of gaiety and excitement as he impacted our left front wheel panel and instantaneously ended his physical life. It was a real shock to us both, not to mention to the beautiful dog. We were so grateful that he had no time to suffer!

Jim and I both meditated on his death, praying for his immediate retrieval into blessed light. Mick got the distinct impression that this dog had chosen Mick as his instrument for changing from this life to the life to come because he wanted to be with Mick. We decided to begin looking for a little kitten with this sweet dog’s gaiety and brightness of nature as soon as we get home from Nebraska, so that we can bring this sweet and gladsome soul into our home and give him – or her – lots of love and perhaps invest him for graduation into third density.

We enjoyed our first meal on the road at a Denny’s near Evansville, Indiana. We love that place! We always stop there and always get the same thing – a senior country-fried steak for me and a Belgian waffle and strawberries and whipped cream for Mick. I swear by Denny’s country-fried steak as being the best prepared anywhere.

We saw the rains finally stop for a while near St. Louis, but we were delayed a good bit in holiday traffic and off our schedule by over an hour even before we hit a massive foul-up on I-70. We stayed with the stop-and-slow cars for an hour’s time before deciding to try to find a way around the snarl.

After that, things fell apart fast! We tried twice to outrun the traffic jam on side roads and then rejoin the expressway at an exit down the road, but traffic was still stopped even a half-hour down the road. So we decided to try an alternate route, but got lost. We ended up taking a room in O’Fallon, Missouri and canceling our reservations in Boonville.

We were exhausted! We rested for an hour and then hunted up a fine dinner at a nearby restaurant that was entirely local and home-grown, where we enjoyed a beautifully cooked steak sandwich (me) and a generous half-rack of ribs (Mick) before coming back to the room and conking out, most grateful for good pillows and firm mattresses.

Today Mick awoke early and got me up for a shower after he had bathed. By the time I was finished, he had all our traps packed away and again we made our Morning Offering in the car. We breakfasted well on juice and rolls en route and then I read Mick the paper. By 11:00 a.m. we had made back our lost distance and felt as though we were back on track.

The weather sweetened and the skies gradually cleared as the day wore on. First came “sucker holes”, small openings in the overcast through which one could see blue sky. Elkins used to tell me that inexperienced pilots would often take their planes up through those holes, only to find that they had no way to get back down through the overcast – hence the name.

We stopped at the Red Lobster in St. Joseph. Missouri, for lunch, enjoying a lobster pizza (me) and a mixed seafood grill (Mick). When we got back in the car, the clouds had began to have definition and separate shapes, and the sun began to peer through the clouds in Sunday-school rays. The rest of the trip was simply lovely. The sunset was long and beautiful with notes or orange, aqua, mauve, yellow and red. We hit full dark as we came into Nebraska at last, having slid up into Iowa briefly near Council Bluffs before heading west on I-80.

At Grand Island, we stopped at Bosselmann’s Truck Stop, which boasts a restaurant well-known to Nebraskans like Mick, and there we enjoyed a quesadilla (me) and a smothered burrito (Mick). My quesadilla wins a blue ribbon as the best I ever tasted! We’d been saving our leftovers all along and will enjoy several good leftover lunches at Mom’s!

At the last of the trip, we were entranced and enchanted by the sky’s gift of a sliver of moon with a huge nimbus glowing golden around it, and lower and off to the right, Venus glowing brightly with Jupiter, dimmer and smaller, to its right. I have seldom seen a lovelier night sky. The new moon with two stars away! It is the stuff of fairy tales, a magical and healing sign for us.

Mom welcomed us close to 10:00 p.m. with cake and ice cream and lots of hugs. Mick got everything put away while I, pretty much at the end of my stamina, sat down to relax and fell fast asleep. Mick roused me for a late Gaia Meditation, at which he offered the closing prayer, and we fell into sleep around midnight, our time – 11:00 p.m. Nebraska time.

The impact of the dog broke out our parking light on the left front side and punctured our window washer container under the hood, so we shall be seeking out a good repairman at Mom’s.