The Vernal Equinox of 2012 has been and gone, and on the Tuscan coast it brought sunny skies and warm temperatures-magnificent!  Jane and Sam were here with me for a few days in Castiglione della Pescaia, hereafter referred to as CDP.  They arrived in Rome a week ago as Sam was to run in the Rome marathon last Sunday. I arrived in CDP about one week ago also, and on Saturday, the day before the marathon, Laura came here to bring all my stuff that she had stored for me in her house since last June-giant TV, Sky decoder, parabola, docking station for iPod, printer, clothes, and so forth. Then she and I proceeded to drive to Rome, arriving at the great metropolis in the late afternoon. We picked up Silvia, Laura’s sister in Eur (a district of Rome), and then off we set to meet up with Jane and Sam somewhere in the center of town. Not only was there a major international rugby game between Italy and Scotland being played that day at the Olympic stadium, but there was also a huge manifestation by some unions on via Cavour, the street on which Jane and Sam happened to have their apartment. Thus driving was a true nightmare, but we (that is Silvia) persevered and eventually the girls dropped me at Termini station, where I found Jane waiting.  The Parisi girls turned around to go back to Eur to meet their parents, because we were all meeting for dinner that evening at a restaurant in Trastevere (another district). Joining us were Phillipa (Pip) and Pete, friends of Jane and Sam from Manchester (the girls were at Manchester High School together for one year before the Rodgers’ family took off for Austin, Tx in 1976) and my Roman friend Giusy, of whom much was writ last year. With the Parisi family we were a party of ten and everyone agreed that the dinner and total occasion at the restaurant Roma Sparita in Piazza Santa Cecilia was excellent and we recommend it highly.  The dinner fare was traditional Roman and superbly delicious.

The day of the marathon dawned fair and warm and our hero set off for the start along with tens of thousands of other hopefuls and their support groups. After a 9 AM start the throng took off and Jane, naturally wishing to see as much of Sam as possible, led us all over the streets of Rome to seek vantage points for viewing his progress.  All very well for the young ones, but rather a trial for the not-so-young. At the end of it all I felt that I had walked the 42 km of the course at least three times. Sam finished in a time that to me seemed more than respectable, but with which he was not satisfied.  After a cooling-off period (for me) I took off for the train to CDP, arriving in the early evening.

The only things of interest in that return trip were that I went to Roma Termini with Jane in attendance, a little father-daughter interlude, where I approached the robotic ticket dispensers brimming with confidence, only to have my hopes dashed when my debit card (bancomat) was rejected, not once, not twice, but three times! I later found, through my nice banker Elena that I had entered the wrong PIN three times!!! and such an event causes the card to be blocked.  As a last resort I used cash and the bloody ticket emerged.  Alas, this was not the only ignominy for your correspondent.  I went on an expedition to view the departure board for the trains, to see that the Pisa train was a few minutes delayed and the platform was not yet known.  So Jane and I mulled about, buying newspapers, getting coffee, etc, until I eventually realized that the board that I had been studying was the arrivals board!!! By the time this realization came upon me my train had gone and the next was a regional one that would take 2.5 hours and make 13 stops ‘ere arriving in Grosseto where I would perhaps find a bus to go to CDP. It seems that stupidity has no bounds.

So the Great Trek 2012 is over; it started on the morning of February 29 in Sarasota, Florida with your correspondent driving out of the garage of the house on Black Oak Court  where he has lived in for the last month of the Sarasota sojourn, and it ended on March 14 in CDP. Stops along the way included Macon GA, Chattanooga TN, Louisville KY, Bowling Green OH, Chicago IL, London UK, and Rome. Chattanooga turned out to be an interesting place. By chance I took a hotel for my overnight stay smack in the downtown area, which so happens to be on the south bank of the Tennessee River. The city is only just inside the state of Tennessee and looking at the map you would think that the Tennessee-Georgia border would more sensibly be the river itself. If this were the case, then Chattanooga would be in Georgia, but it is not.  The city was established in the late 1830s in what was territory of the Cherokee Indian nation.  The city fathers have done a fine job in constructing today’s Chattanooga. There is a recently built Aquarium and an Art Museum in the riverfront area and a pedestrian bridge over the river at the bottom of Walnut Street that is a boardwalk from one bank to the other.  Many of the original brick buildings in the riverfront area have been renovated as cafes, bars and restaurants. On the south bank the land is very hilly and some streets descend to the river level with alarming slopes.  Altogether, Chattanooga looks to be a pleasant town with a friendly modern face.

The road from Sarasota to Chattanooga is Interstate 75 which makes a sharp right turn on the approach to Chattanooga and heads off north east towards Knoxville, crossing the Tennessee River just to the west of the city and then doing a sharp left turn to head for Lexington KY, Cincinnati OH and points north.  Anyone who has read my earlier posts will maybe recall some of my lyrical waxing about this highway, but from Chattanooga on I abandoned it in favor of I 24 which takes me northwest to Nashville where I switched to I 69 which takes me through Bowling Green, KY up to Louisville, KY.  This detour to Louisville is because this is where Michael lives these days and by leaving the direct route to BG, OH I have the opportunity to spend some time with him-a very worthwhile detour, I think.

I left Sarasota on February 29 and the Sarasotans that I had spoken to reported that this winter has been the warmest in living memory. I can add to this by saying I brought a whole set of cold weather clothes with me and I have never taken them out of the bags. In previous years, especially in January and February, there were occasions when I had to wrap up to keep warm, but not this winter.  As I drove north out of Florida, it was clear that the warm winter was not confined to Florida. In southern Georgia, while the deciduous trees were still in their leafless winter garb, I had glimpses of peach trees in blossom and here and there a red bud shyly dressed in its pink blooms, and on the approach to Atlanta I spied a splendid magnolia in full bloom. While in Sarasota for the winter months I enjoyed the company of Alex and colleagues at Ultrafast Systems. The company is ten years old this year and in the years since I left it has definitely prospered. The accompanying photo shows a group of colleagues and former colleagues enjoying a little conviviality.

On March 2 I arrived in Louisville KY, pronounced “Lewvul” by the locals, and the day did not start well.  Michael called me early in the morning and reported that he had been sick for the last couple of days with a sore throat, headache and “wobbly legs” (his description).  He was somewhat better on the morning that he called but still had the sore throat. I resolved to keep to the plan as far as possible and defer a decision about meeting until I arrived in Louisville.  Not long after starting out from Chattanooga I ran into one hell of a storm, thunder, lightning and slashing rain, and I mean slashing; there were times when visibility was down to zero. Eventually I decided that enough was enough and pulled off at a town named Manchester, of all places!  I was not off the road but about ten minutes when the muck went away and the sun was out again, so off I set. I kept the radio on as I was driving north and I learned that there was a line of violent thunderstorms replete with tornadoes sweeping across the mid-west.  When I arrived in Louisville the TV in my hotel room was showing nothing but the weather picture, and horrible it was. Tornadoes were all around southern Indiana and northern Kentucky, destroying property and killing people. Fortunately, nothing hit where I was, so Michael and I were able to meet up and spend a happy evening and morning together.

So I arrived in Bowling Green where I found Emily and my house in good shape. I had little time to enjoy my daughter’s company because the next day she lit out to Sarasota (of all places) with her girlfriends, arriving back the following Friday full of congestion and a sinus infection. I did not let my time in BG go to waste though, as Tom K and I, by dint of determined application, were able to spend many an evening hour in the Reverends’, our favorite watering hole, downing margaritas.

Then it was off to Chicago (driven by Emily) to stay a few days with J and S prior to our catching our various planes to Europe, thereby ending the great trek.