The radio gets old

My commute to work takes 35 minutes. Counting the return trip I spend a minimum of 70 minutes in the car each day. Add a traffic jam or some bad weather and my weekly total could easily eclipse 6 hours. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I enjoy the time alone and make very good use of it. I spend a great deal of time in prayer. Many times a beautiful sunrise or a flock of geese overhead will spur me to thank God for his beautiful creation. But being honest and realistic, I don't pray the whole time. Much time is spent just thinking. Much time is spent in quiet reflection. But my time is not always spent in such noble ways. Some mornings I crank up the radio and rock and roll my way to work. If I'm in a more mellow mood I may tune to a contemporary Christian station or hum along to the classical music of Beethoven, Bach or Mozart. Some mornings I tune to sports talk radio to check on the latest scores and highlights. But sometimes the radio gets old. Some days I can flip through stations and not find anything I'm in the mood to listen to. That's when I turn to a relatively new form (at least for me) of in-car entertainment. I'm talking about audio books. Books on CD or formerly known as books on tape. I've gotten to where I truly enjoy listening to a good story. Tami doesn't care for audio books. She says they move too slow. In other words she can read faster than a narrator can, well... narrate. As for me, I love these books on CD. Sometimes it's a fiction novel and sometimes it's nonfiction. Have you ever driven around the block just so you could hear the end of a good song? Lately I've found myself driving around the block to hear the end of a chapter. That may sound pathetic, but getting out of the car in the middle of a chapter is unthinkable. The wonderful thing is some books are so good I find myself surprised that I've gotten to work so quickly and disappointed that I have to wait until after work to hear more. This is only another sure sign of my age. Only old guys listen to audio books, right? It won't be much longer and I'll be driving all the way to work with my turn signal blinking and going 15 MPH below the speed limit. It stands to reason. I WILL be a grandpa in a few weeks.