{"id":58676,"date":"2025-08-01T03:33:47","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T03:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58676"},"modified":"2025-08-01T03:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T03:34:10","slug":"what-a-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58676","title":{"rendered":"What a visit!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Now, that’s what I would call an eventful visit … so that’s what I’ll do.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I ventured to West Texas and spent a couple of days visiting four of my best friends on Earth. They are members of a Rotary International Group Study Exchange team I accompanied to Israel in May-June 2009. We have stayed in touch for the past 16 years and they have become part of what we call our “familia.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We enjoyed some barbecue, a steak dinner with another couple I have known for many years. We reminisced about the month we spent in one of the most marvelous places in this world of ours.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Then, this afternoon, after enjoying a fantastic lunch at a famed BBQ joint in Olton, Texas, we got in touch with a young man and his wife — two more friends of ours — in The Netherlands. The young man was part of a Dutch team that toured Israel with us and we also have remained close.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

That wasn’t the end of the excitement … for me. I took off around 2 p.m. expecting to arrive home in Princeton around 8. Hah! I ran into two thunderstorms, one along U.S. 82 as I approached Gainesville, and then along U.S. 75 just as I turned south in Sherman. It was violent, full of lightning and thunder and deluge-scale rainfall. The wind that preceded that first storm was so intense I seriously thought I would witness a tornado. Yes … I was frightened.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

My six-hour home turned into a nearly eight-hour trek.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I so thoroughly enjoyed seeing my good friends, people I love dearly. We all went through a lot together on our tour of Israel. It will stay with us forever.<\/p>\r\n\n

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Now, that’s what I would call an eventful visit … so that’s what I’ll do. I ventured to West Texas and spent a couple of days visiting four of my best friends on Earth. They are members of a Rotary International Group Study Exchange team I accompanied to Israel in May-June 2009. We have stayed … Continue reading What a visit!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9704,7789],"class_list":["post-58676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-gse","tag-thunderstorms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58676"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58678,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58676\/revisions\/58678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}