January 1, 2005 - Drive to Auburn, Alabama

I was a bit concerned about leaving the rig in the back corner of the parking lot since we had so much stuff sitting out in plain view in the back of the pickup and I could not keep an eye on it from the window of our room. But parking the rig on the road often was difficult and involved compromises, so I put aside my qualms as best I could for the night. In the morning it turned out my fears were justified; during the night several of the cars in the front and side parking lots were broken into and ransacked. Curiously enough, despite having all that stuff in the pickup bed, our rig was not touched. Any thief worth his larceny certificate would certainly have seen all that stuff, so the question in my mind was why not us? Possibly the perpetrator just ran out of time, but it also may have just not been that attractive to Light Fingered Louie, or, as a philosopher once pithily put it, "He who steals from me steals trash."

For whatever reason, we preserved our record of never having had something stolen from us while on the road and continued driving south after a typical hotel complimentary "Continental Breakfast", a misnomer if ever I heard one. The actual breakfasts we have enjoyed while traveling in Scandinavia, England, Germany, and Austria have been hearty, no-holds-barred breakfast buffets featuring meat, eggs, and cheese along with different kinds of bread, rolls, and toppings such as jam, marmalade, and butter as well as a wide assortment of beverages. In contrast our Continental Breakfast, which was representative of what we have encountered in the U.S., consisted of coffee or juice plus two types of dry cereal, bagels, and some sugary sweet rolls. I'm not complaining-it was quite sufficient to get us going in the morning—but it certainly did not last us all morning.

We stopped for lunch just north of Atlanta to eat and discuss whether we would take I-85 straight thru the heart of town (27 miles but narrow, twisting, and with a lot of interchanges), the upper bypass on the I-285 loop (wider and with fewer interchanges, but 32 miles), or the lower bypass on the I285 loop (wider, fewer interchanges and only 29 miles, but passes the airport). We decided to take the lower bypass and risk being delayed by airport traffic, but in the event we encountered light traffic all the way around the city, probably because it was New Year’s Day.

Another two hours of driving thru the pine forests and pastureland of western Georgia and eastern Alabama brought us to Auburn, where we planned to visit with Helga, Monika’s sister, and her husband Jim. Jim had considerately arranged for several possible spots to park the rig in front of his house, so we had no problem getting it safely put away on a side street where it would be out of the way of traffic. Then we settled in for a nice evening of chatting about our respective families, politics, and plans for future trips with Heinke and Gustl, our German in-laws.

Later that evening, an old friend of Helga and Jim’s stopped by with his granddaughter and mother-in-law to enjoy the lighting of the Christmas tree candles. This is NOT the same as plugging in the electric lights on the typical U.S. Christmas tree. No, we are talking about 20 or so real candles clamped to the branches of a cut scotch pine tree or some such with a plethora of small wood or glass ornaments. If any of the candles would ignite the branches of the tree, you could, of course, have a major problem with a large burning torch being inside the house, which made some of us a bit nervous. Helga lit the candles while I clutched at a fire extinguisher, but as it turned out everything went well, which is to say, the tree didn’t go up in flames! It really looked quite pretty decorated in that traditional German fashion, not as gaudy as electric lights would make it but a more subtle mix of decorations and lights. I enjoyed seeing a tree-decorating tradition that dates back to Martin Luther putting candles on Yule trees at the time of the Reformation, or so I have heard.

Helga also fired up some candle-powered Christmas pyramids of the type we had seen in Seiffen, Germany, on Wanderung 2. If you have never seen one of these things, the heat rising from the candles passes thru wooden blades that turn the whole interior assembly of the pyramid. The interior assembly can range from a small turntable with Christmas figures and objects in the simple pyramid to complex, multi-tiered tableaus in the larger versions. In any case, it is fun and for me almost mesmerizing to watch the candles flicker while the tableau goes round and round and round…zzzzz. Where was I? Oh yes, for some reason I suddenly felt very sleepy and shortly after we put out all the candles we all headed off to bed.