At 6:30 am on Monday, we drove out of the garage into darkness and rain, to Atlanta, Georgia, with my youngest daughter Z at the driver's seat. Z was returning to college after the winter break. My wife and I didn't want her to drive alone for the exhausting long journey of some 660 miles, so I went in the car with her. After 2 hours into the drive we started paying attention to the rest areas we passed by, and soon spotted the one we wanted to see, the one where we took our first break on our very first trip to Atlanta, Georgia more than 5 years ago. We started recalling some details of that trip, and were surprised by how much we remembered.
"To Georgia We Go" was our motto of that summer, specifically for that trip, because we were going there for Z's participation in the National Track and Field Junior Olympics Division 3 Final. She was the athlete, and I was her coach. We were excited, full of enthusiasm and hopes. Even though Z did not do well enough in the competition to advance to the national final, that trip still has left us with a lot of happy memories. We had no idea back then that she would be interested in going to college there, as she did later. She was not old enough to obtain driving learning permit yet, so of course I drove in my car all the way.
Our Olympics dream died quite some time ago when Z got injured in a divisional meet in high school. But still, "To Georgia We Go”, in her car this time.
