Due to health issues, wife work schedules and helping take care of a grandkid on most weekends, our sense of travel sometimes is limited to maybe just a few trips per year.

Recently we found ourselves with a couple of days just to ourselves (sweet Nana and me – grumpy gramps), so we decided to make a quick run to the state next door to see our daughter and her family.

With my issues of lung and heart, when I travel and spend even one night it seems like I am staying several days or even a week by the bags I bring.  But that is what happens when you need a machine to help you stay healthy while sleeping and another machine to help kick your lungs back into working condition every morning.  Many times, those two machines alone have put my traveling mood into reverse gear to the point of canceling a trip

Some of my take-aways from this quick, up on a Friday and return on a Saturday, trip are about to cross before your eyes, all eight of them.

Take-away 1 – Clear out your trunk before making a trip, it makes putting your bags and things in it a whole lot easier, especially when it’s like 90+ degrees outside.

Take-away 2 – When going through a big city (ours being Kansas City) somewhere along the way, do the due diligence to plan ahead and time your passing through the big city for mid-morning or mid-afternoon, and on a Friday for sure before 4:00 in the afternoon.  Guarantee this will cut down on the stress level of all within the confines of your vehicle.

Take-away 3 – Act excited about surprising the grandkids and be ready for the letdown when you realize that truly surprising them on your arrival will seem to fail nearly every time.  This time it was because the little pizza place that we were meeting the kids, well they sat right by the front windows looking out at the one road you have to be on to get to the parking so you can guess the letdown of enthusiasm when we walked in.

Take-away 4 – Be ready for a letdown when you get home and get ready to eat at your favorite restaurant, because it seems you always find a great little place with much better food while traveling.  In our case it was that little pizza shop in a town of maybe 1,500 where they wood fire oven the pizza – yep Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s or Casey’s will just not seem to be as tasty now.

Take-away 5 – Realize that no matter how hard you may try, it seems enevitable that when eating out you will get either a wait person that checks on you way too much or you will get a wait person that seems to disappear after they take your order.  Lucky for us, we had pretty good luck all three times we ate out on this trip, though the young gal we had at Perkins asked us twice about desert when our desert was already on the table as part of the special we ordered.

Take-away 6 – Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that no matter where I am going, no matter what time of day and no matter what the weather forecast we listened to before leaving said, we will hit some nasty weather somewhere along our travels.  This trip it came on the way home, less than an hour from home but on the worst stretch highway of the trip.  Yep, for twelve miles we (I) white knuckled the steering wheel while driving through rain that was coming down in dump truck sized buckets, while blowing sideways across my windshield due to the winds.

Take-away 7 – No matter how hard you try, somebody in the family was expecting to hear when you left, when you arrived, when you headed back home and when you arrived back at the home place, and of course you forgot to let them know on one, two, three or all four of the legs of the trip.

Take-away 8 – Know that at our age, no matter how enjoyable the trip may have been, if the traveling itself involved anything above three hours on the road itself, then the morning after arriving home will feel like you ran a marathon or worked a twelve-hour ship at that factory down the street.  Sorry folks, it’s just plain life or as some of the grandkids would say, you’re getting old.

So, the motive of today’s sharing is – just roll with the punches that come along on any trip you make, because no matter how hard you plan to make the trip perfect in every way, eventually that perfection will turn on you like a ticked off squirrel and will abruptly bite you in the @$# at least once or twice along the way.

And there you have it, ‘Grumpy Gramps’ spewing in response to something he may have seen and liked or disliked, and either way had the feeling that he needed to get his response ‘off my chest’.  So maybe you can enjoy, enlighten and think about what he may have said.  And if you want, feel free to respond with a comment or two on his blog and ‘Grumpy Gramps’ promises to give you some type of response.  Word of caution, ‘Grumpy Gramps’ has a line that shall not be crossed regarding name calling, racism, hatred or threats and more – and if that line gets crossed, well you’ll see at that point.

As for those wondering about why I call this ‘Grumpy Gramps’, it’s because I have been around the walk of life for a long while now and for those who know me, I have my thoughts and opinions which seem to spew out on occasion much to the chagrin of my wife and a few of my grandkids.  When that happens, the grandkids look at me with squinted eyes and say, ‘being grumpy, gramps’.

To read more ‘Grumpy Gramps’ or ‘News to Know’ bookmark crossdovewriter.wordpress.com and follow the ramblings and insights from the center of the world….

Prayers, blessings and happy thoughts – ‘Grumpy Gramps’.

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