Last week, Julie and I spent a few days in a warm weather climate for a mid-winter vacation. It’s one of the benefits of marrying someone who for all practical purposes travels for a living — she has all kinds of points piled up to make both travel and lodging blissfully affordable.
Yet in many ways, this particular vacation was unlike any other we’ve taken in thirty-one years of marriage and in roughly four years of being empty nesters.
Here are five reasons why . . .
1. I remembered to pack my ab roller. I forgot to pack my Fruit Of The Looms. Thank God for Target.
2. I will always remember where I was when I heard that the Eagles’ Glenn Frey had died — when our plane landed, my first message was from a good GS friend texting me the news. Here’s my favorite track that features Frey’s vocals — an much under-rated tune from his solo career, Part Of Me, Part Of You:
3. Keeping with the music theme, while on vacation I read the new Tom Petty biography by Warren Zanes.
My favorite story? Petty’s lead guitarist, Mike Campbell, has long been in irrepressible composer of musical pieces. He’d often build intricate tracks and bring them to Petty who would then write the lyrics and presto! a hit song. Anyway, in the early 80s, Campbell brought one of the tracks to Petty, who was distracted with some personal issues at the time and didn’t really understand the composition. So Campbell took the tune to Don Henley who turned it into The Boys Of Summer. When Petty heard that finished product he was so mad that he hit a wall with his fist, breaking his hand. Petty’s loss — and subsequent fracture — remains my favorite song of all time:
4. Florida is the only place in the country where you can see a Millennial In A Man Bun alongside an Octogenerian In A Walker.
5. We were originally scheduled to return on Friday, January 22. Yet we realized on Wednesday night that with the impending Snowzilla in the Carolinas, that wouldn’t work. So we rearranged flights, checked out early, and landed home on Thursday night. Good thing – the Charlotte airport was completely shut down all day Friday.