travelling across...

... the state to visit the cousin in South  Carolina. I went up to Atlanta on Friday afternoon, to attend a dinner sponsored by my employer. Celebrating people who have been with the company for years, in increments of five: twenty, twenty five, thirty and a few who have been with the business for thirty five years, which seems like forever, huh? After the dinner (average food, in a large corporate banquet facility), I went to spend the night in the attic in Decatur.

I had requested to be off work on Saturday, and was hoping to go to visit my pen pal who lives in Greenville. But he has such a busy social calendar, it did not work out with me trying to set up a visit on short notice. I still had the day off, so I called a cousin who lives in SC, and asked about driving up to visit her. That was apparently a much better plan, as she welcomed me. Then I contacted a cousin who lives in Decatur and asked if she was interested in a road trip. It came together in a remarkable manner, with us leaving Atlanta about 9 am on Saturday.

Down hill from there: it took four hours to complete a two hour drive. Traffic came to a near halt for no apparent reason in east Georgia. We diverted off the interstate, and took rural two-lane highways that parallel the four lane for a number of miles. Then got back into I-85 near the bridge that spans the GA/SC line. Missing the creeping traffic that was traveling at 3 m.p.h. for miles. Assuming there must have been an accident, as the south bound traffic was slowed when we got back on the road to Greenville.

Arriving at the cousin's house, two hours later than planned. Had a good visit, lunch, laughs. And headed back towards metro around 4 p.m., where we got in another inexplicable snarl, driving at 12 m.p.h. for about an hour as we neared Atlanta. Though I did not expect to have that problem on a weekend afternoon: there is absolutely no predicting what will happen when you are traveling on a highway that is twelve lanes wide. It finally resolved, and we got back in around 7. Causing me to finally get back home around 10 p.m., after another delay around the airport where there was invisible construction (signs, orange barrels, but no workers doing any actual work). And flopped into bed, weary from all that sitting, creeping, detouring, inching along.