A recent road trip to Florida provided me with tons of
fodder for a new story.
I’ve complained about left lane-challenged people
before. This one is for those truckers
that like to ride in any lane without a purpose, and often cruise side-by-side
for miles. They surely know they are
bottle-necking traffic and creating a dangerous log jam, seemingly oblivious to
anyone else on the roadway. Why?
OPEC is another target.
This group of greedy clowns charged me anywhere from $2.99 to $3.39 per
gallon of gasoline. My return trip a
week later saw prices rise fifteen cents a gallon because some rowboat in the
Middle East approached a U.S. Navy ship.
Sure. How about America raising
the price of a bushel of wheat or corn we sell them by $30 because it didn’t
rain in Iowa on Wednesday?
Rest areas along I-95 are also pretty glum. Although I cannot speak for the women’s
rooms, the men’s rooms are deplorable. I
needed waders to make my way through puddles of urine to pee at these
‘convenience stops’. Here’s a free tip
for the guys: Stand closer; it’s shorter
than you think
.
People driving 72 MPH in a 70 MPH zone, who see a state
trooper dealing with a customer on the other side of the road, don’t need to
slam on their brakes. The trooper is NOT
going to run back to his cruiser, squeal the tires, and drive across the median
to chase you down for your 2 MPH infraction!
When bus tours are visiting fast food restaurants, those
buses should, by law, be parked in front of the restaurant. This way, it would serve as a warning for
other potential patrons that there
are 63 screaming, obnoxious kids running around the place, or there are 63
undecided seniors trying to negotiate the price of coffee with their AARP
discounts.
My sainted wife loves peaches. A series of giant, billboard-sized signs
proudly advertised peaches, peach preserves, peach juice, and peach jelly, for
sale. Strategically placed along the
interstate every eight-or-so miles, those signs were visible for about an
hour’s journey. I decided I would buy a
basket or two and took the designated exit.
This exit led me to a fork in the road and no indication which direction
to take. It seems as though I didn’t
need that extra space for some peach passengers after all.
And, it must be the law in Georgia that every front seat
passenger in a van or SUV must put their feet on the dashboard or out the side
window. (It’s no wonder folks from the
other 49 states make fun of Georgians.)
Just how well do seatbelts work when one is lying down rather than
sitting erectly?
The big thing in decorating large passenger vehicles these
days is to replace that stupid 1990’s “Baby on Board” window sign with decals
of Dad, Mom, the kids, and family pets.
Why? Who really cares? And, what about unconventional (read: gay) families? Do those decal packages come with two daddies
or two mommies? There’s your free
marketing idea.
After finding a fast-food restaurant without 63 drama cases,
I stopped for coffee. The coffee needed
to be made fresh requiring a 20-minute wait so, I did without the caffeine.
Tuning the radio gave me an altogether different tour of The
South. In any given length of roadway resided
a minimum of 11 religious stations with screaming preachers, 7 rap/urban
stations, 9 that carry both kinds – country and western, and 2 easy listening stations. Let’s not forget to mention the 4 NPR
stations with droning, monotone news readers to whom no one listens. This is why CDs are so popular.
Spending 14-hours in your car was actually out-lawed by the
Geneva Conventions under their “torture” statute. Still, traveling without having to spend a
night in a motel room with chalk body outlines is incentive enough to make a
trip in one shot.
I’m just glad I don’t drive an electric car because I don’t
own 869 miles of extension cords.
