531...

...is my personal best. Today I drove from Columbus to Valdosta, in the morning, arriving there just before noon. Then leaving south GA, and driving diagonally across the length of GA to end up  in TN at dark.  Which means for all practical purposes, or at minimum braggin' rights, this is my best (or possibly worst) record for distance travelled in one day.

I vaguely recall when I was about twelve years old, the summer my dad decided he would drive from south Georgia to the Pacific Ocean and back. We drove and drove and drove in an old lime green Ford Fairlane station wagon.  Well before the era of Interstate highways. It was, I believe, the year my brother had a learner's permit, so I'm thinking that he was actually doing some of the driving. Which permanently relegated me to the back seat, which was covered in hot, sticky vinyl. Where I sat for three thousand miles (x 2), with a changing choice of fellow travelers, either parental or sibling-al, stuck to the gooey seat with me, in a car with no air conditioning, traveling in June across the desert of west Texas, plus the barrenness of Arizona, and desolate New Mexico.

There was my mom, scrupulously keeping records: of how much we paid for gas at each stop to refill, how many miles we were getting per gallon, as well as total miles travelled per day. What we paid for lunch when we stopped for burgers in west Texas or the desert of New Mexico. How  much we paid to spend the night in a Joshua Tree National Park campground. What it costs to get in to oooh and aaah at the Grand Canyon. What the tickets were for spending the day at Disneyland in California, or riding on the cable cars in San Francisco.

And making notes in the day planner where she carefully noted all the humorous signs placed in cornfields across the US from one coast to the other by the Burma Shave shaving cream company. The day my dad was desperate to make up some lost time/miles and drove over five-hundred miles in one day, she made him promise to never do that again. I think there were likely some serious marital threats involved when the children were out of earshot. 'Way too much time spent in the car from sunrise to sunset trying to get across west Texas, which is about the  most barren desolate place I have personally experienced in North America.

Which is why I know/knew that driving five hundred miles in one day is too much. But did it anyway to get from nearly Florida to practically Tennessee. I'm there. Thank you, Jesus.