The Summer of Love Begins

I forgot I enjoy road trips. Memories can become distant when you are an adult, you tend to forget things you love or enjoyed as a kid, and you do it again, and the feeling of the moment or the thing comes back to you. My dad considered himself a roadman. It was nothing for him to get in his Green Hornet, an old 1970s green car from a nice old lady who didn't drive it that much, to get on the road and travel. There is something about summer travel that cannot compare to anything in the world. The way the wind hits your face with the car window rolled down, hanging out in the car with a loved one, family, or that best friend you can't live without with your favorite tunes where highways and byways and intersections and that car becomes a form of home, comfort, freedom. 

I came into the world by way of North Carolina down in the Ridges by way of Westfield next to Sauratown Mountains, and my girl Pilot Mountain always laying on her side with her hip in the air and afro on the top, lol. She is home. Yet, Virginia has become Carolina's cousin, always ready for fun and laughter, and now I have spent my life here. At least every other month, I find myself crossing between the two like familiar friends. And yet my favorite site has become VA's slogan from the 1960s that Virginia is for Lovers. You can see the black signs everywhere, and not too far behind it or around it or near it, you can always find this huge sign at a rest stop or impromptu place in the city with the word LOVE. We all have a definition of what this word means to us; it is such a deeply emotional, personal, and evolving word to all that encounter it.

I have been allowed my life to be one thing like most Americans normally its because somebody told you; because it is what you thought, what you believed, because, because, because...  And somehow, that thing called the pandemic shifted something in all of us again, teaching us about what it means to live vs. exist vs. being a slave to a commitment that you didn't want or ask for in the first place. More importantly, with a million Americans now gone due to this, it lets you know that life is a blade of grass and man's glory but a flower. So when it is time to feel life, one must be open to it. 

Even with gas at an ignorant rate (and trust, we all know it's ignorant because as sure as we are sitting here, the oil company is going to tell us by way of their investors at the end of their fiscal year the profit margins they reached; funny but not funny) a road trip of Love is in order. A reminder from VA and all of its participants that LOVEworks. Come along with Yoda and me; that's what I call my car and see if we can't find some of these signs. According to LOVEworks, there are 300+ signs around the state; I only counted 229 for the website on its Regional listing (April 25, 2022) below; so I will use this as my roadmap, my guide.

Central Virginia (64), Northern Virginia (37), Blue Ridge Highlands (36), Hampton Roads (31) 

Virginia Mountains (24), Shenandoah Valley (18), Heart of Appalachia (16), Chesapeake Bay (15) 

Southern Virginia (15), Eastern Shore (3) 

I'm looking forward to reminding myself that it's still alright to play and have fun at any age, as a matter of fact, it's required.