Roanoke Trip

My lady friend Nuria and I visited Roanoke this past weekend. (It's Monday now.) I saw friends that I had not seen in twenty years. (I moved from Roanoke in 2003 and now it's 2023.) I still have the same car—my trusty 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee—which makes me wonder if there is a Jeep Museum that might want it. I should check into that. On the way home from Roanoke, the odometer flipped past 104K miles, which isn't a lot of miles for most cars. 

I met up with some friends (Linda and Claudia) whom I had worked with when I lived in Roanoke. Claudia made dinner for us, which consisted of meatloaf, sautéed zuchini and squash, and steamed broccoli (a word I will never learn to spell properly). For dessert we had fresh fruit cocktail—pineapple, mango, and grapes. No canned fruit! Mostly we sat and talked, from 3PM until well after darkness had fallen. It was a very pleasant evening.

The next day we went to visit "the Lesters," a family that Nuria has long known and spoken of frequently. They were a nice couple, very affable, and we had lunch with them (a salad and the world's most delicious sphaghetti—the sauce was made with buffalo meat. Or is it bison meat? Whatever, it was very tasty!) I greatly enjoyed meeting them and spending some time with them in their home.

That afternoon we went to a "nursing home" to visit an elderly woman that Nuria has known for a long time. She was 88 years old and had fallen in her home. She had been in the hospital, and now she's in a nursing home. Her home has been sold. She believes that she will leave the nursing home and move into an apartment, but looking at her lying in bed, I find it difficult to believe that she will ever resume an independent life. Her home now is a destination that awaits too many of us.

My impression of Roanoke surprised me. I lived in Roanoke for 17 years. But on this trip, it seemed very different. The streets were in bad shape. I crossed an intersection, going perhaps 10 mph, and the bottom of my car slammed into the street. I hope nothing was broken, but now my Jeep has a new squeak that I have never heard before. Traffic going into Roanoke was horrible, partly due to road work. But the streets were in worse shape than I remembered, more narrow than I remembered, and the houses in southeast were old-looking. A house can be old without being old-looking. The trick is partly upkeep and partly decorating to make the house attractive. Nuria has put in a lot of work to make our house look nice from the street, with a brick circle containing flowers and solar-powered decorative lights that shine at night. We keep the bushes in front of the house trimmed to look neat. So it's partly a little work and partly a few dollars here and there, and I don't mean dollars for home repairs—which can cost a lot—but rather a few dollars for decorative things. It makes a diffence. 

On Monday morning we checked out and drove back to the Heights. The trip took about 3½ hours. Unpacking took 15 minutes, which was considerably less time than was required to pack for the trip. All-in-all, a nice weekend, and I'm blogging about it because I want to let everyone know that I appreciate their kindness and for sharing their time with Nuria and me. It was a treat!