2 1/2 weeks of vacation and holiday time is a wonderful thing. It had given me and my wife the chance to go south to visit my dad who is recovering from lung cancer.

Heading south was a real adventure. If you remember, there was a major snow storm in the Midwest that was paralyzing that portion of the country. We are driving south on I-75. Normally, this is a pretty easy drive. Make that same drive when the amount of snow you see is increasing exponentionally as the hours tick away is something to be remembered. I knew it was getting bad when I saw the 18 wheelers starting to park. The time is now 6:00pm on 12/22/04 and we are in Sidney OH and we need to get gas. My wife made a suggestion that this would be good place to ride out the storm and see if we can get a hotel room. Excellent suggestion I heartily agree. We were able to get a room and went out to the restaurant next door to eat. There was a couple from upper Ontario who had stopped and were in the same hotel we were.

Do you remember the last Indiana Jones movie? You know, the one with Sean Connery and they are looking for the Holy Grail. There is a scene in that movie where the old knight who is charged with protecting the grail tells Indiana Jones after he chooses the grail, You have chosen..... WISELY!!!!! That is what I was thinking after hearing this couple from Ontario say it was too bad for them to continue. We stayed in Sidney until Christmas Eve. We settled in for the night and watched as 18 inches of snow fell. The next day it takes us about 2 hours to get the car dug out of the hotel parking lot. My wife and I needed to go to the WalMart Supercenter that was just down the road. We needed to get a thicker coat for me and both of us needed some shoes that could handle winter. You see we had forgotten to pack those things we had in Michigan. It wasn't supposed to be that cold down south. After leaving WalMart, we were driving around and noticed that none of the restaurants were open.

We decided that food was a good thing to have so we went back to WalMart and bought enough frozen entrees to get us to the following morning. Smart move on our part.

We left Sidney, OH on Christmas Eve morning at about 6:00am. The journey ended successfully at my parents home that evening. Whew!!!

More about my dad. He had cancer surgery back in April which I was able to come down for. The doctor had told him then that they had gotten all of the cancer and no further chemo or radiation treatments were needed. Life is pretty good it seems.

Later (about two months or so) they put my dad on both chemo and radiation. According to my mother, it seemed to depress my dad. He started making statements like, "Maybe it would be better if I weren't here." and other statements similar to that to my mother. She finally had had enough of that and told him, "If you keep making statements like that, I may help you on your way." Amazing how psychology works isn't it.

My dad had contracted bronchitis last October. Trouble was he still had the bronchitis when we saw him at Christmas. To top that off, he just didn't look good. My wife and I made the decision we were going to make periodic visits to visit my dad.

For the most part, life is good.

More Later.

Charles Ramsey