speaking of road trips...

i want to take a minute to thank my friend and purveyor of caffeine, jim whaley, for his kind words and his warm welcome to the blogosphere. he made mention of the virtues and medicinal qualities of the proverbial road trip, which reminded me of one particular road trip that he and i took a couple of years ago. jim was in the process of fulfilling a dream of his... to open his own coffee house. he tracked down a supplier in new orleans, and had to go down to make the initial purchase of supplies and product, as well as learn how to make the stuff with their equipment.

knowing of my undying love for all things new orleans (i went to seminary there and lived and worked there for 9 years), and having signed on as painter/plumber/electrician/maintenance man for his budding business, he asked me to ride along. i thought i was making like priceline and hooked us up with a room at the providence house, the official size and weight hotel of the new orleans baptist theological seminary. i told the desk clerk that i was a distinguished alumnus, and i wanted the special distinguished alumni rate. i dont remember exactly when it was that i finally told jim we got the same rate everybody gets, but it was still considerably cheaper than anyplace else in town. after we checked in, we hit the quarter and jackson square. we ate muffellatas at cafe maspero's, we walked the quarter, we pointed and laughed as we passed by starbucks, and we even dropped into the ultra-trendy, super-chic canal place and checked out the facilities... only the best for us. i rang up a former youth group member of mine who was now a seminary student herself, and she and a few friends met us at cafe dumond (what, you thought jim whaley was gonna spend a weekend in new orleans and NOT kick it at dumond?)

saturday we were up bright and early and got the tutorial treatment from the folks at new orleans coffee works... they even got me to try some stuff (prior to this, it would have had to be 50 below with a gun to my head for me to put a cup of coffee to these lips). pretty good stuff, it turns out. after jim spent all his money and promised to send them his daugher as final payment, we were back on the road home.

ah, the road trip! my wife, she prefers to fly. its a nice novelty... if you can get a window seat and fly at night. but there's nothing like settling in behind the wheel and tooling down the interstate to one great destination or another. this Christian life is a lot like that. its a journey... the apostle paul describes it as a race, but not a sprint... nor hurtling through the stratosphere in a pressurized aluminum tube, in a giant hurry to get there and get back. its more like a marathon... or a road trip. take in the sights, experience places and faces along the way. leave your mark, make a difference.

jim, thanks for the invite, and for turning me on to great coffee. oh, hang on, let me pull over so the nice officer can get by. well gosh, he must want to say hi... he's stopping right behind us.......