After more than a year of avoiding people and not seeing any of our friends, Tom and I have had a busy month being social. It seems as if the pandemic ended very abruptly and suddenly we were scheduling time with friends left and right.
Chris and Bill, our bike riding friends were the people we had planned to see first. We had two different dates scheduled with them in April, but it rained both days. Really rained. Poured all day. Miserable riding and, at that time, we weren’t ready to meet people indoors. We tried rescheduling again, but couldn’t find a date that would work, so we are planning a day or two at Mohican in November or December.
We did manage to fit most everyone else into a busy social schedule. We found a beautiful, sunny day for a wonderful ride with Sherrilyn on the B&O Trail from Lexington to Butler. Sherrilyn was visiting her mother, who has Alzheimer’s, so it was a stress-relieving ride for her. We have seen Sherrilyn in Utah and Maryland, so seeing her in Lexington was a fun change. After our ride we had lunch in the picnic shelter at Der Dutchman.
Sandy and Eric stopped by for a visit on their way to a graduation party in Columbus. We only had a little time together but managed to take a walk in the park and talk a mile a minute. Sandy and Eric were getting ready for a big trip to Hawaii, so we wanted to hear all their plans.
We got together with Wendy at Mohican State Park, exploring a section of the park away from our usual haunts. Wendy and her family often rent a cabin at Mohican, so we met her at Campground B and had a picnic lunch together. Then we took a long walk around the campground, the cabins, and up a trail. It ended being about five miles, but the time flew by as we caught up on the last year. Wendy welcomed her first grandchild, Emma, in February and we had to see some pictures of the beautiful girl.
John and Jackie set up a playdate with Steve and Amy. It was the first time Steve and Amy had been to John and Jackie’s new house. We enjoyed a fun lunch together and had a ping pong tournament that John won. After that, we played a very raucous game of UNO. Turns out the latest edition of that old card game has several new rules. Amy pretended she didn’t know the rules for the first hand, and then proceeded to blow us all out of the water the rest of the game. In one hand she gave me two “Draw 4” cards in a row and I ended up with 186 points for that round!
Our final social event was getting together with Pete and Cathy for a couple of hours. They only live in Hilliard, but Hilliard is the opposite side of Columbus from us so it seems far away. We were supposed to go for a bike ride, but, again, it was raining like crazy, so we met at a picnic shelter halfway between our two houses instead. Pete is an avid bike rider and has ridden by our house. He and Tom made tentative plans to ride to Cincinnati in October if the weather cooperates. I volunteered to drive the support vehicle and bring them back.
During our social month we also saw Cousin Maureen, Aunt Anne and Uncle Paul, and went to a wedding. I got to preach at the Lexington Church of the Cross and we attended Sunday School and then went out to eat with the class. Another first – eating in a restaurant with a group of people outside our corona-bubble.
We love being social, especially with this special group of long-term friends (I almost said old!). Although we were isolated during the pandemic, we certainly made up for it in the last month. We are looking forward to making the rounds again when we get back in the fall.