A Day's Drive Up US 19, Perhaps

Just saying again: Having a solidly conservative state like Georgia showing signs of flipping to Hillary Clinton in the Presidential election - even with Johnson and Stein in the equation - gives me a warm feeling.

Although I've lived almost my entire life - 39 years of it - in the crazy hazy Sunshine State, Georgia remains in my heart as the state of my birth.

With Dad serving as a US Navy pilot at the time, the family was stationed in Albany when me and my twin brother were born. Mom keeps remembering the doctors were talking about a football game during the labor, which didn't make sense for May, unless it was a spring practice or something. Still, it's the little details that stand out...

I'm in the mood to go visit the old homestead. I haven't been there since the family moved in 1974 for a brief stay in Virginia Beach before Dad retired in 1976 and we relocated for the most part to the Florida Gulf Coast. I've been on a lot of road trips through Georgia but was always passing through - to DC/Maryland many times to visit Dad's family, and up along the interstates on a major road trip from South Florida to Chicago for an ALA convention in 2000 - and never with a proper time to swing through Albany (being a little out of the way in the corner of Southwest Georgia).

But hey, it's a straight ride up US 19 - ah, to start the trip in Palm Harbor! - and the maps say it'll take five-and-a-half hours, which is half a business day and leaves maybe an hour or two of circling the Pokestops before driving home (unless I take the step of checking into a hotel and staying for a full day).

'Course, my budget is insanely tight. I can barely afford a day of doing a comic-con (at $40 a ticket and extra for buying birthday gifts. Driving up is going to consume gas more than two stops, three meals a day unless I pack a lot of stuff into coolers but then the temptation to eat someplace local and colorful will be paramount, the hotel is probably going to set me back $70 or so for something decent with a sit-down bathtub...

Sigh. One of these days I gotta win a lotto or something.