Turning 40 is a decent occasion to celebrate health and sobriety these days.
Knowing, as I do, many who’ve opted to run marathons, tough mudders and triathlons instead of imbibing on craft beer and bourbon and eating enough fried food to kill Elvis several times over.
I have believed certain things about the South for a long time. Long-held suppositions that I fully believed I would either see born out or completely dispelled were I to go there.
I was not wrong.
We left Chicago around 4:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, enjoying, as we do, driving at night.
I thought about why we like to do this.
It started with the kids. When they were very young, it was much easier to travel by night so they would sleep. Many of our drives were around 6 to 8 hours in length, which gave us plenty of time to get somewhere and still enjoy some sleep before getting on with our journey the next day.
The question in my mind yesterday was why do we still do this even now that the kids are grown?
The answer, for me, was evident when we woke up in a chilly, but sunny Nashville, Tennessee.