The "Weekend With Friends" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just returned to Lancaster, PA after spending a weekend in State College, Pennsylvania with our traveling friends Jere and Just Sue.  Jere, Just Sue and I were all high school classmates.  After teaching with Jere for many years at our high school Alma mater, we retired and began to travel together with our wives Just Sue and my wife Carol.  Cruises to the Caribbean and the Panama Canal as well as multiple trips to many other Caribbean islands made life what we had dreamed about all our lives.  We have taken 18 trips together and spent some of our weekends talking about where we might enjoy heading to next.  Two of our favorite past vacation spots, Antigua and Barbados, were discussed as possible return locations.  After we talked, Sue gathered a few notes she had made this past week and began a game we have grown to enjoy during visits, "Where were we when....".  She had spent time going through her vacation scrapbooks and questioned us about past trips by saying, "Where were we when Jere and LDub decided to have banana splits for lunch instead of a sandwich or salad?"  We spent the next hour or more reminiscing about some of the best times of our lives.  When we had exhausted all her notes with fond memories and a few laughs, we gathered around their dining room table for lunch.  

Just Sue, Jere, Carol and LDub after landing in Hawaii
during our very first trip together in 1999.

Our intention for a fun afternoon was to visit nearby Whipple's Dam and bask in the spring sun while enjoying a good book or an afternoon nap, but rain and cold weather spoiled our plans so we took in a movie instead.  After returning back to their home near Penn State University, Carol and Just Sue spent time talking while Jere and I spent some time looking at his HO train yard.  Soon hunger struck once again so we drove to Doan's Bones, a local BBQ favorite of ours, for our evening meal.  More talk about family and good times filled our evening before we hit the sack.  Sunday morning and Just Sue had breakfast ready when we arose.  Clouds still filled the skies, but more conversation about past vacation memories brightened the morning before we had a final lunch, packed our luggage in our car and headed back to Lancaster.  We still haven't made a final decision on a location for our next vacation together, but we still have time before we will contact our long-time travel agent, Karen, and make our reservations.  We feel very lucky to enjoy each other's company and the good times we spend together every year while traveling to exotic locations that we could only dream about while laboring at our jobs and raising our respective families.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.