Today is Monday, January 13, 2025. Elliot and I are back from our sojourn to Columbus, Ohio, in my son’s car, starting in Sarasota, Florida, and ending in the Buckeye State, named after its Ohio buckeye trees. The trip certainly had its moments of tension as Winter Storm Cora massed just about the time we began driving away from Florida and to the Midwest. The states that were going to be affected by the storm included Tennessee, Atlanta, Georgia, Nashville, and some other states along the way.

Our first stop was in North Port where we visited “Joshua” at his hotel for the first time. Elliot and I were treated to a suite there and we immediately sensed how Joshua’s staff embraced him as their general manager. We could immediately tell how loved Joshua was and how sad his staff was in seeing him go. This marked the first time his staff actually laid eyes on me and it was quite flattering to hear what people said about Joshua and what their perceptions of us together were. After everyone said their goodbyes to Joshua and us, it was time to begin our road trip.

Our first stop was in Tallahassee, Florida, at a Hampton Inn and Suites, on Railroad Avenue. For the first day, Joshua did most of the driving, while Elliot and I sat comfortably in Joshua’s Mazda CX-5. After this, we listened to weather reports constantly to see if we needed to change our route plans. And we sure did; instead of driving down to East Ridge, Tennessee, we drove to Macon, Georgia, where we stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn by Mercer University. By this time, it started to rain while we were in the Peach State. We also had a lovely dinner at a local restaurant I researched online called The Back Burner Restaurant, located on Ingleside Avenue.

The next day we were able to stick to our arranged route, which was to go to Lexington, Kentucky, to stay at a DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Lexington. The hotel was the most striking, in my opinion, of all the hotels we stayed at over this journey, not to mention Joshua’s most recent managed hotel in North Port, which was extremely clean and well maintained. The hotel in Lexington had a lovely atrium, a whole lot of mahogany, and rooms that were truly capacious. We had a true sitting area, replete with couch, flat television set, and easy chairs. At this hotel, we also had a wraparound terrace where we were able to view the lobby down below and the other guests on their floors. On this day, Elliot drove somewhat from Georgia to Lexington, Kentucky.

While we drove through these states, we did encounter snow along the way, but it was mostly shoved to the side of the road by then and it did not inconvenience us at the least. We were very fortunate, we thought.

Our last stop was, finally, in Columbus, Ohio, where we spent one night at Joshua’s new hotel in downtown Columbus. Here we had a suite as well which was very nice. Thus ended our four-state, 1,019.3-mile road trip that was punctuated by many giggles and guffaws over body effluvia coming from within and outside the car. What can I say? This is what we men like to gab about when we’re stuck in a car for close to five days. It isn’t mature, but who says we are. We did skirt politics now and then, but my son said not to be too conspicuously liberal sounding in Dump territory which were some of the states that we visited on this road trip.

Today we came home via Columbus, Ohio, and we did pretty well. We had an 11:24 a.m. flight home and we took an Uber to the airport at 9:15. The airport is so small that we went through security in a jiffy. My backpack was detained by a TSA agent as it turned out that I had forgotten a bottle of water was in one of the compartments. I apologized to the agent and had him throw the bottle away.

The time in the air from Columbus is very minuscule. It’s supposedly an hour and forty-eight minutes, but our flight was briefer than that. I believe we got in under an hour and several minutes. Maybe we took off at 11:40 and we landed at LaGuardia around 12:42 p.m. There was no movie viewing on this flight, that’s for sure. I finished reading Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s which is far different from the Audrey Hepburn movie version. There is no big romance between Holly Golightly’s character and the narrator in the novella. In the movie adaptation, “Fred” is heterosexual and is played by dreamboat George Peppard. In Capote’s book, Fred is a homosexual and a good friend of the main character. And there is no Hollywood ending as there is in the film. The book ends with Golightly leaving New York, allegedly, for the wilds of Africa.

Well, that’s it, folks. I wish my son lots of luck in his new position and new surroundings. I do hope this goes very well for him. And I hope that he does appreciate Elliot and my participation in his resettling from the Sunshine State to the Buckeye State. Even though I didn’t get a chance to drive. I did say I was available, though, but it fell on deaf ears. Even Elliot drove less than I expected him to. Anyway, the mere fact that we there should have been enough.

And so it went!

Here is a picture in our hallway in the Lexington, Kentucky, hotel.

Here is another picture in the hallway which features horses since Lexington is home to the Kentucky Derby.

Here is the view from my balcony on the fourth floor, I believe, in the Lexington hotel. The view is quite grand.

Here is the sign saying we’re entering Columbus, Ohio.