Okay, I am way behind on my blog posts. I have excuses but won’t bore you with them. Albeit one involves me accidentally erasing several video posts that I had worked on for days.

(Fortunately I still have the raw footage on an external hard drive so I can recreate them for posting later.)

After New Orleans I spent several days at the Marine Pilot’s Institute sitting in on the training of ship pilots brushing up on their skills of docking whomping-big container ships. They use simulators like airline pilots use, plus training on 1/25 scale model ships on water in model channels similar to major ship harbors. I will post that video later.

Next I drove ARGO to Thomasville Georgia and stopped at a Georgia plantation. A well-to-do gentleman there looked wistfully at ARGO and me. He asked what it was like traveling around America. I will not use his name to protect the envious.

“I have dreamed of doing that,” he said, “Driving the back roads, exploring, stopping at small cafes. How do you like it?”

“Love it,” I answered, “Love it. I’m having a ball taking my time on the circle I am making around America, talking to people and just discovering America.”

After a bantering about it for some time, he thanked me and started walking back to his group he was with made up of several couples. Then he turned back towards me.

“Would you mind taking a minute to meet my wife and friends?”

“Sure.”

He walked me over, making the introductions, lauding me with almost celebrity status.

I soon realized why he instantly held me in such high regard. And I quickly comprehended his dilemma.  

“Honey,” he said to his wife, “This is John Butler, the man who we saw driving the big silver Airstream. He’s traveling around America like I’ve talked about wanting to do someday. Tell her about it, John.”
 
She was a charming beautiful Southern lady. Well dressed and poised. She turned to me, smiled, and gave me her full attention.

“Well … I am really enjoying it,” I started. Clearly my role was to help his wife see the merit of her husband’s dream.

I rambled on about my project to discover America one story at a time.

“Tell her about how comfortable your interior is and how the sofa makes a bed at the push of a button, John,” he coaxed.

I obliged him with a vivid description of the interior with its various features, and how easy it is to drive it. The man looked like he was in a near trance-like state envisioning the day he would be talking a trip like mine.

His wife nodded, smiling as I continued talking and as her husband continued wheedling me along.

Her smile said she understood what I was saying. Her eyes and body language said, THIS IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.”  

They invited me to stay and have dinner with them and their friends but I needed to move on down the road before night fall. And so I left my new friend, with his dreams, and his wife, with her dream of stopping his dream.

I’m being funny with that line and that’s a little unfair of me. My guess is that the thought of such a trip was scary for her, fearing the discomfort of traveling on the open road so far from the safety of her home, family and friends.

I think of them from time to time. I hope he won her over and they are off on the adventure of their lives away from their comfort zone. I hope they find what Mark Twain, one of my favorite authors, knew to be true:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”