Recently, I’ve been writing a bit about living the great American Novel, yet sometimes, it seems that the events of the day might be closer to living a short story destined for a collection of Great American Short Stories. Perhaps last weekend’s adventure was a short story like that. There was no profound character development or conflict overcome. There were no profound moments of poignancy or great mirth, simply a snapshot in the lives of the people that make up this country.

My regular readers will know that last weekend, I set off to meet a friend that I knew from social media whom I had never met face to face. It was a pleasant day for a drive. We drove local roads to get up to the Interstate, passed the farm that sells home made ice cream. Not a lot of stories there. Likewise, the interstate seemed a bit like just about any other road. It was a section of highway I’ve travelled many times before, and there wasn’t any great feeling of a road trip.

As we got off the Interstate and started to drive the final portion of the trip, it started to feel a little different. There were signs for firemen’s carnivals along the way and Fiona lobbied to stop at them. We passed placid looking lakes, all the time driving through this land between suburbia and exurbia, with the pull of New York City in the distance.

We pulled into the little neighborhood where the party was. Unfortunately, the GPS didn’t have the exact location. It placed us on a side street along which many cars were parked. But they weren’t for the barbeque we were going to. No, it was for a graduation party. There was a yard full of people. Kids were splashing in the swimming pool. Others were talking or eating. We walked down the street in search of our party. At the end of the street, to high school boys approached a third. They gathered around a motorcycle in what appeared to be a discussion about whether one of the boys would by the bike for another.

Soon, we found the barbeque. There were several cars in the driveway and voices coming from the backyard. Should we walk to the front door, or poke our heads around the back. I’m not particularly a front door sort of person, so I looked towards the back. Out on a deck, my friend was at the grill, and shouted down a greeting.

It is probably fair to say that a majority of my friends online are either activists or technologists, and my friend fit nicely into both categories. I was expecting that others would have similar geeky tendencies, but instead, the gathering had more of a feeling of a bunch of friends from junior high school, with artistic inclinations.

There were some interesting discussions about music, particularly as we found others that enjoyed the same festivals we go to, but there wasn’t a lot of geeky discourse. Instead, it was the fabric of life. The broken marriage, the career difficulties and new jobs, the hopes and aspirations of kids heading off to college, the traffic death of a high school student, and the reuniting of friends from many years ago.

The drive home was also uneventful; again, passing by placid lakes a long commute from New York City. As I sit at write this a few days later, I wonder, am I any different as a result of the trip? Did the trip make any difference? No, it made no difference, and it made all the difference, sort of like a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.