Thoughts from the Road...
I have been spending a lot of time in the asphalt jungle lately. I spent last weekend going to Indiana, and this weekend I got up at 5 a.m. on Saturday to drive 200 miles to a meeting in Bowling Green, and I was back by 10 a.m. Sunday for Sunday School. I wrote most of this in my brain while I was on the road. I also used the voice recorder on my cell phone to refresh my memory later, which might be the neatest feature ever on a phone. It's very handy. I hear Keith Urban uses it to record song ideas before he loses them.So, these are my thoughts from the road yesterday.
First of all, I have concluded that it doesn't matter what time you go to bed or how early you wake up, you will drag ass until your normal wake-up time. I was so tired both days, and on Friday night I got plenty of sleep. Luckily Saturday morning I had a friend who woke up way too early who was up and called me. The next morning I prayed someone was up, but no such luck. I drank tons of coffee and played the radio really loud and sang along. And as soon as it was 7:30, which is my normal wake-up time, I was fine. I thought that was interesting. I'd been up for two hours and nothing was working to keep me alert until it hit the time I'm used to waking up.
I love my car. Generous Motors has been very kind to me, and they make it worth my while to buy their vehicles by offering me a discount because my dad worked there for 22 years. I learned how to drive in a Chevy Cavalier, and I've just kept getting new ones since 1992 when I got my license. In college I drove a borrowed Plymouth Horizon that my grandma gave me to get to my job at the local paper, which was about 6 miles from campus. And when I graduated I went to buy a Cavalier but when they didn't have any with automatic transmissions, I opted for a Pontiac Sunfire, which is the same car with a different name. I had that one for 9 months before I ended up waiting for a red light in front of a gal who was absent on "red-means-stop" day at driver's ed. But the last two Cavaliers I've had (my 2000 and now my 2003) have had issues with my cruise control. I have trouble driving the speed limit, and I love my cruise control. That is why I was mad when my old car had a short in the cruise. I ultimately had to stop using it because it would just go off when you were driving down the expressway going 72 mph. And, of course, the Chevy garage couldn't figure it out. Well, my current car developed a cruise issue on the way home. I think it might be a fuse because my right blinker is not working either. All I know is that if you have the cruise on and try to use your blinker, it shuts the cruise off. I'm going to have to look into it, but it disappoints me because otherwise I love my little car. I don't see the point in having anything bigger when it's just me.
So, I stopped at a gas station yesterday to get a cup of coffee and I see this lady who looks familiar to me. I can't really place her. And then I realize that she looks like Hillary Clinton but with longer and blonder hair. I imagine that if Hillary Clinton threw on a hoodie and some jeans and rushed off to the gas station to get coffee, she'd look just like this woman. But it got funnier. As she goes to get in her car, she's got those magnets on it like political candidates have and it appears she's running for city council. And then I look at her bumper stickers. I think she was a Republican. That cracked me up because most Republicans I know would be absolutely mortified to look like Hillary.
I drank a lot of coffee on my ride yesterday. That meant I had to take lots of bathroom breaks. For the most part I made it to the next gas station for my next cup of coffee. But twice I had to stop at rest areas on the highway, because I was in the middle of nowhere and really had to go. Rest areas scare the shit out of me. My whole life I've heard horror stories about them, and recently there have been rapes at one that's on my way home from just about everywhere. So I try to go at fast-food places or gas stations. (Although sometimes late at night gas stations don't seem much better.) I just have a few rules when I go to rest areas: 1) If there are no other cars or people (preferably families), I don't stop. 2) I try not to go to rest areas after dark. 3) I will not stop at a rest area where my cell phone doesn't work and 4) I get in and out as quickly as possible. It's very unfortunate that people feel the urge to do bad things at rest areas, because they are a pretty nifty feature, especially on those long stretches of highway out there. I can see why they are closing down in a lot of areas, because I prefer not to use them. But when you really have to go, those blue signs are like beacons and the rest areas are like a desert oasis.
posted by Laura at
6:40 PM
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