Road Trips

Like more than a few parents of children on the spectrum, it often seems that I have spent a significant portion of the years since my son's birth in the car and, indeed, the car in motion. When Charlie was younger, driving him around and around often seemed the only way to soothe him to sleep (though he was almost 99% proof positive guaranteed to wake up once the car stopped or we lifted him out of his car seat). Maybe because we were living in the midwest when Charlie was a baby and toddler and we had a hankering to come back East, to see friends and family and to visit the ocean: The three of us have always enjoyed road trips, whether in our old green car or in a rental car with that rental car smell, or in our current beloved over 104,000 miles black car (and it's not quite four years old.....).

Guess that must have been one reason why last week I more than enjoyed (yes, that is the word) the many long rides through the Peloponnese and up into the northern-er part of Greece, in a bus the color of Pepto Bismo and on some tiny windy roads high up in the mountains featuring numerous hairpin turns one after the other.

I sat behind the bus driver, to get the best view possible of the road. The road signs were written in Greek and transliterated into English. I read both and as I was reading signs above what clearly were body shops and household appliance stores, it occurred to me that I'd never read Greek in anything but a book, and a book by an ancient author, and here I was reading street signs and billboards. (Including one that read ORAMA, leading a few students to ask if that was a reference to the US President, but no----ORAMA means "vision").

We had gotten into Athens on a bright Saturday morning and, though most of us had barely slept on the flight over, we all pretty much left our bags at the hotel and headed into the city. One group immediately rushed to scale the Acropolis and another headed into the Plaka, the "old city" of Athens---a tourist area oozing souvenir shops and restaurants proffering gyros and souvlaki. By Sunday morning, and through Wednesday, we were boarding the bus around 8.30am every morning and driving off to a new site.

We drove from Athens to Mycenae, home to Agamemnon and Klytemnestra in the myths, on Sunday, and then onto Olympia, where the first Olympic Games were held. After seeing the ancient site on Monday, we drove northwards across the Rion-Antiorion Bridge and up into the mountains to Delphi. Our hotel was right on the side of the mountain and this was the view from my hotel room. We started Tuesday visiting the sanctuary and ruins at Delphi and then drove through the mountains and past Arachova, now known for its skiing. We proceeded through Thessaly and up to the small city of Meteora in Kalambaka, where monasteries have been built atop rock formations that look out of Dr. Seuss. Wednesday started with us visiting a monastery and a convent (both built atop those rocks) and then driving back to Athens in rain that became a deluge.

It was a lot of time on the road and in a vehicle. Some students played the movie game (I listened and learned how spotty my movie knowledge is, but the last time Jim and I went to the movies together it was to see Mystic River); others dozed, listened to music. I wrote down the names of many of the towns we drove through and followed our course on a map, read more signs, searched for an answer for a movie game question, took photos. Maybe it was a bit too much bus-time for some of our group; for me and some others, it was a way to take in a lot of sights and see a lot of the country, and to put up our feet.

Jim jokes that I always fall asleep when he's driving and that's at least semi-true (and I guess I just provided something of an answer to a question I've been asked over the years, namely, "when do I sleep?"). I stayed awake in Greece as everything was new and I don't know if I'll ever see it again, plus there was a lot I wanted to be attentive to----riding in a tour bus in Greece with 15 students isn't the same as sitting beside Jim with Charlie perched in the back seat, making our rounds through Jersey.

The three of us went on yet another of our road trips yesterday. We drove almost two hours to see a new neurologist in South Jersey (in other words, it was a longer trip to see this neuro within New Jersey---we usually see a neurologist who's in Pennsylvania and it takes less time). As we drove down the Turnpike, Charlie's eyes under his two hoods fixed steadily on the passing scenery of billsboards with Regis and Kelly smiling beside the TD bank logo and gargantuan warehouses with lines of truck bays, Jim talked about how the containers get unloaded from the ships in the port and then driven all the way down to South Jersey where there's more space, and I noted how the scale of everything back here in the US has been overwhelming me ever since being in Greece, and we saw a sign that said "Marlton" and Jim started reminiscing about his South Jersey friends from college and especially good old Mike who's gone.

And when I woke up, we were in Camden County amid tract homes and sprawling suburban malls, and Jim was reading off the names of the street signs. "We're almost there to see the new doctor," I said, turning my head back towards Charlie, and then I looked out to read the signs along with Jim too.