Monday, August 09, 2004
Home again, home again...
Well, that's the end of my vacation. The NoodleDog and I got home yesterday around lunchtime, and although I'm very glad to be home and not driving in the rain any more, I'm quite sad to be back to work today.
We left The Mac’s place on Friday morning, and drove to St. Cloud, which is just outside of Minneapolis. I was kind of hoping we could have gotten further, but we didn’t. I had a rousing discussion with The Grumpaw about whether people should just stay out there in the left lane, driving along just over the speed limit like everything is fine, while people like ME come up behind them, ticking along at close to 100 mph (160 km/hr) and have to slam on the binders and scream bloody murder. He thinks it’s fine, because he’ll “just have to pull back out anyway to pass in a few minutes…” so why not? Because it gums up the works, is why. If you’re going to drive in the “fast lane”, you have to be going fast. I think if you want to reside in the fast lane, you have to be going at least 130 km/hr (uh… something like 75 mph, I think?), and preferably, you’ll pull over into the right hand lane and let people who are going faster than you pass.
When I drive, I kind of make it a goal to keep to the right lane as much as possible, and only go into the left lane to pass. It makes it a lot better because usually, I’m going a lot faster than the rest of the traffic, but in the event that someone even faster comes along, I’m not in his way. Plus, when he does zing by, I can zip out behind him and follow him, using him as a radar shield. Yes, I do that, and I’m not at all ashamed. I can’t tell you how many times people have done the same to me, thinking that I must have some secret powerful laser/radar-detection device that allows me to speed with impunity. Not so, my friends, not so. I’m just chancing it.
Anyway, we left St. Cloud the next day at an ungodly hour, and everything was just fantastic until we hit the Saskatchewan border, where the friendly Canadian border guard told us to have a nice day, and to watch the weather, eh? Because there had been a tornado through there just a little while ago. Greeeaaaat. There were ominous black clouds all along the Eastern horizon, and less ominous but very tricky rain-laden grey-brown clouds approaching from the West. I had the top down for about an hour, and then it started to rain. My mother came over the radio after a while and asked if I’d like to stop. “That'd be great…” I replied, as the NoodleDog glared balefully at me, his wet whiskers vibrating. Just after I put the top up, and while we were still on the two-lane not-so-highway, the skies opened up and poured. Seriously, poured. There was so much rain that when the big semis passed us, we couldn’t see a thing. The Tiny Car, which is usually fairly reliably water-tight unless I take it through the Co-Op car wash on the right (which has more powerful jets than the one on the left), leaked. The NoodleDog was alright because he was sitting on the right hand side of the car (which usually leaks more than the left side but was on the far side of the trucks, of course), but I got rained on inside the car whenever a big truck would pass, covering us in a wake of water. Needless to say, I wasn’t too happy about the whole rain situation, and when it was proposed that we stop in Swift Current overnight, I didn’t fight it.
The best thing about Swift Current was that it had a Tim Horton’s right beside the motel, and I was able to get a French Vanilla Cappuccino. The worst thing was that it appeared to be mostly built on SAND, and I got sand in my shoes and the NoodleDog tracked sand into the motel room on his feet. That, and the people who were having a domestic dispute outside the motel room from 2-3a didn’t help. The NoodleDog didn’t think that was very funny, either, and barked at them twice, which was a bad thing, because we didn’t stay at a “pet friendly” motel, we just snuck him in.
So it’s nice to be off the road and home. But it’s another work day, and it’s as though I never left. I even have a familiar feeling headache to keep me company. I’m not used to this staring at a computer screen for hours on end, sitting still, being inside all day. It’s no good, I tell you. I need to find a career where I can be outside most of the time when it’s nice out and inside when it’s not nice out, at my discretion, and still earn enough money to do fun things when I’m not working. Does anyone know what job this is? If you do, let me know.
We left The Mac’s place on Friday morning, and drove to St. Cloud, which is just outside of Minneapolis. I was kind of hoping we could have gotten further, but we didn’t. I had a rousing discussion with The Grumpaw about whether people should just stay out there in the left lane, driving along just over the speed limit like everything is fine, while people like ME come up behind them, ticking along at close to 100 mph (160 km/hr) and have to slam on the binders and scream bloody murder. He thinks it’s fine, because he’ll “just have to pull back out anyway to pass in a few minutes…” so why not? Because it gums up the works, is why. If you’re going to drive in the “fast lane”, you have to be going fast. I think if you want to reside in the fast lane, you have to be going at least 130 km/hr (uh… something like 75 mph, I think?), and preferably, you’ll pull over into the right hand lane and let people who are going faster than you pass.
When I drive, I kind of make it a goal to keep to the right lane as much as possible, and only go into the left lane to pass. It makes it a lot better because usually, I’m going a lot faster than the rest of the traffic, but in the event that someone even faster comes along, I’m not in his way. Plus, when he does zing by, I can zip out behind him and follow him, using him as a radar shield. Yes, I do that, and I’m not at all ashamed. I can’t tell you how many times people have done the same to me, thinking that I must have some secret powerful laser/radar-detection device that allows me to speed with impunity. Not so, my friends, not so. I’m just chancing it.
Anyway, we left St. Cloud the next day at an ungodly hour, and everything was just fantastic until we hit the Saskatchewan border, where the friendly Canadian border guard told us to have a nice day, and to watch the weather, eh? Because there had been a tornado through there just a little while ago. Greeeaaaat. There were ominous black clouds all along the Eastern horizon, and less ominous but very tricky rain-laden grey-brown clouds approaching from the West. I had the top down for about an hour, and then it started to rain. My mother came over the radio after a while and asked if I’d like to stop. “That'd be great…” I replied, as the NoodleDog glared balefully at me, his wet whiskers vibrating. Just after I put the top up, and while we were still on the two-lane not-so-highway, the skies opened up and poured. Seriously, poured. There was so much rain that when the big semis passed us, we couldn’t see a thing. The Tiny Car, which is usually fairly reliably water-tight unless I take it through the Co-Op car wash on the right (which has more powerful jets than the one on the left), leaked. The NoodleDog was alright because he was sitting on the right hand side of the car (which usually leaks more than the left side but was on the far side of the trucks, of course), but I got rained on inside the car whenever a big truck would pass, covering us in a wake of water. Needless to say, I wasn’t too happy about the whole rain situation, and when it was proposed that we stop in Swift Current overnight, I didn’t fight it.
The best thing about Swift Current was that it had a Tim Horton’s right beside the motel, and I was able to get a French Vanilla Cappuccino. The worst thing was that it appeared to be mostly built on SAND, and I got sand in my shoes and the NoodleDog tracked sand into the motel room on his feet. That, and the people who were having a domestic dispute outside the motel room from 2-3a didn’t help. The NoodleDog didn’t think that was very funny, either, and barked at them twice, which was a bad thing, because we didn’t stay at a “pet friendly” motel, we just snuck him in.
So it’s nice to be off the road and home. But it’s another work day, and it’s as though I never left. I even have a familiar feeling headache to keep me company. I’m not used to this staring at a computer screen for hours on end, sitting still, being inside all day. It’s no good, I tell you. I need to find a career where I can be outside most of the time when it’s nice out and inside when it’s not nice out, at my discretion, and still earn enough money to do fun things when I’m not working. Does anyone know what job this is? If you do, let me know.
