{"id":573879991,"date":"2010-06-06T22:18:55","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T03:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573879991"},"modified":"2010-06-27T00:24:33","modified_gmt":"2010-06-27T05:24:33","slug":"cycling-back-to-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2010\/06\/06\/cycling-back-to-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Cycling back to reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;t sleep nearly as long as I thought I would. I was fully prepared for a 22-hour Rip Van Winklian experience.<\/p>\n<p>As has been the custom for a while now, a big day of travel requires a day of staring at the walls. I did laundry and started catching up. After the 17 days out of the country I have more than 150 Emails and 798 items in my RSS reader through which to navigate.<\/p>\n<p>I spent all day on that and, well, at least I&#8217;m making a dent. I&#8217;d post links, but most of them are now a bit dated.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;ll give you this, mentioned yesterday, the Small Things I\u2019m Looking Forward to At Home list.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Private dining tables with space between you and the next customers<\/li>\n<li>Evenly paved roads<\/li>\n<li>Not walking everywhere<\/li>\n<li>Cheeseburgers<\/li>\n<li>Drivers who obey a few of the traffic laws<\/li>\n<li>Being in a structure that isn&#8217;t moving<\/li>\n<li>The gym<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These aren&#8217;t criticisms, but rather appreciations of our own routines.<\/p>\n<p>It will be nice to relax a bit more in my daily travels. It will be lovely to have a private conversation at dinner. Every we were was very compact. We walked on so much marble and gravel and cobblestones that we wished, after a day or two, that we&#8217;d brought a pedometer &#8212; and ankle braces.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d longed for cheeseburgers very early on, which is ridiculous because we were eating incredibly delicious meals everywhere we went. Still, you just want a cheeseburger. We&#8217;re grilling out tomorrow night.<\/p>\n<p>You think traffic is bad in your town? Drive in Istanbul.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m ready to be stationary. Aside from the last night in Rome we have to think hard back to the last time we weren&#8217;t inside something that was conveying us one way or another. This, isn&#8217;t a bad thing. We had perfect seas for the entire trip, on only one night could you really feel the ship swaying at all. But sitting still has its own pleasures.<\/p>\n<p>As for the gym, I mentioned the food, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wendy came over<\/strong> for dinner tonight. She wanted to go to Olive Garden. We just came back from Rome, and so we laughed at her.<\/p>\n<p>I mentioned the Auburn people we met in Rome, Athens and Pompeii, but it was still nice to hear a familiar accent. Maybe that should have made the list.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of Auburn people, did I mention that the guy in the stateroom next to ours was an Alabama graduate? Small world, indeed.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m trying to catch up. Expect this to be a very redundant read until I get back up to speed. But enough about me: How&#8217;ve you been?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;t sleep nearly as long as I thought I would. I was fully prepared for a 22-hour Rip Van Winklian experience. As has been the custom for a while now, a big day of travel requires a day of staring at the walls. I did laundry and started catching up. After the 17 days [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,18,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573879991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alabama","category-auburn","category-weekend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573879991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573879991"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573879991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573879993,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573879991\/revisions\/573879993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573879991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573879991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573879991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}