Map DEAF Jam

It’s widely known that I am a GPS fan who uses high tech mapping devices daily to navigate from bed, bath and beyond. So even with a few flaws and some occasional misdirection worthy of a slide of hand magician, it takes a lot o’ poxes for those l’il black boxes to get on my Ox-cart’s bad side. But this week I had the (dis)pleasure of trying to navigate with a new-fangled voice-programmed satellite map instead of the old fashioned punchy numbers go-car-go show. 

  

No doubt it’s fun technology to be able to yell back at the GPS and finally force an inanimate robot screen to listen to me be mean after so many years of being ignored by the rest of my family. But the problem is the thing just glows and knows I can’t punish it for misinterpreting everything I say and seizing up unexpectedly anyway. Is it that my rust-bucket car is too noisy or is it my sloppy speech is so slurred that the command ‘Highway’ stops traffic and really sounds in a way like ‘Hives n’ Whey’?

  

At least when the alive members of my tribe ignore me or are coma-bound they try to LOOK moderately interested as they turn pale and their eyes glaze over easy to sound. The irritating dash-top roadie doesn’t worry if I’m in a hurry, it just drones and bleats, objections to my questions with constant repeats. Who pays hundreds of dollars to coax a stupid machine to berate and badger, when spouses will happily do that job for free but louder?

Though it’s true the blackend box made me blue, it DID eventually route me to where I needed to be, still witless, mapless, and no worse for the wear. I honestly think I can already do all that stuff too but better on my own, since I take up little more real estate while sitting on the dash and don’t need plugging in so long. I just hope when my gray matter gets even softer and my ear canals miss more calls 'bout boatloads of free eats for geezers, my friends and family will be as patient with me as I am with this deaf and dumb GPS with frequent seizures.

Dumb Drum Fun

Don’t you miss the good ol’ days, when something didn’t work all you had to do was bang on it or slap it against a hard surface and it was usually good to go. Unreliability was a blood sport where the fights were good for at least few rounds before the Band-Aids ran out or the final knockout came. Now our stuff either works for mere minutes or for years but either way, once it goes - it goes.

I miss the satisfaction of pounding my TV and it’s static-filled signal into submission with my fist. These fancy digital televisions and gadgets just go dark and stare back at you in silence when they don’t work. If I wanted that kind of treatment I could just try to talk to any tattooed dude who works in a gas station or convenience store after midnight.

Since I’m not a fast learner, I still wander around my house at night drumming on inanimate things just to show ‘em who’s boss. The tables seem to get the message because most of them that still have feet  hold up my  magazines and placemats perfectly without complaint. The windows on the other hand don’t appreciate my fingerprints and their disgust is Transparent, especially when I ask them nicely to wash themselves.

Since my car has reached the ripe ol’ age of 13, at least it is understandable when it becomes cranky, ignores my input, and behaves badly like most teens. It is probably no surprise that I like to take the car to the woodshed repeatedly when it doesn’t do as I ask, but that’s ok because I park it there.  Rest assured I never re-BUFF my car’s advances nor do I beat the beast relentlessly – though at times when I get close to car lots, I have been tempted to KICK the tires of OTHER cars! 

Techno CAR-ma

While robots and I spend lots of quality time together and I DO whisper sweet nothings into an Android on a regular basis, I’m not a fan of these new cars that parallel park by themselves. Honestly, I don’t know about you, but first off who HAS to park this way anymore on a regular basis? It would be one thing if I had to parallel park daily or even once a week around small children wearing big orange cone-headed caps; but for occasional activities like personal hygiene which I do annually or orally, why pay for fancy options?   

I also don’t remember where on my insurance policy that I listed the car as its OWN driver? Why should I take on all the risk and responsibility to park these cars if THEY are the ones incurring the liability now? If my car wants to do something nice for me automatically why doesn’t it try changing its oil, ‘honking’ my ‘horny’, or  better still, picking the bugs out of its own grill for a change.

I might be more open to a vehicle that parks itself if the simple technology already in my car worked well 100% of the time. Except for when my window squirters fall-off and shoot innocent bystanders, a simple skip of a CD or an occasional wrong turn directive barked by a GPS, usually doesn’t hurt anyone. But I’m guessing if my sensors turn senseless and my car’s ‘puter-parker brain burps over the by-and-by, my attempts at a ‘parallel  plunge’ near the South rim of the Grand Canyon COULD become more akin to ‘bye bye’!  

I know I know it’s just my bad, technology car-karma coming back to haunt me again. I guess if the birds, bugs and I kept our Wite-out to ourselves and treated cars with more respect in the first place, they wouldn’t strike back with skid marks n’ mistakes so much. Maybe I should just get with the modern times and learn to be more accepting and progressive about our car’s ‘right to drive’ itself. Ok, I’ll think about it, but if the that bolt-bucket starts burning rubber to promote the unholy marriage between gas and electric drivetrains – that’s where I’m gonna’ draw the line!

Rocky Road Recipe

Despite the advent of those little GPS travel boxes, I still love the romance of maps. I can stare at them for hours and run my fingers along roads, rivers, and CREASES imagining the countless places I can go when people tell me to ‘Get Lost’. I love seeing rare oddities in mirrors and discovering unusual places like a ‘full serve’ GAS station or a Polish hot dog shop, which apparently in some communities, is the exact SAME PLACE!

I have no need for my usual ‘puddy tat’ toys, fancy entertainment or complex puzzles whenever a map needs re-folding. I can literally spend hours trying to get a 4 X 5 foot map back into its flattened glove-box ready state. More often than not, un-folded maps will never again escape the size equivalency of a crumpled basketball and therefore are more suited to be recycled as a lumbar support, or for those really long road trips – ultra absorbent seat pads.

For some odd reason the street signs in the Midwest U.S. all have the same standard street names like First, State, and Main. The only difference is that each sign will have a varied suffix tacked on the end of the name like Road, Circle, Drive, or Way, though I always seem to end up in COURT? To make matters worse, even neighboring communities in short proximity to different U.S. States will have the EXACT SAME named cities in addition to those common stock street names as well. What is the problem - along with steel, cars, and VCR’s, are we now so lazy and incapable that we can’t even invent original names for our own streets and cities either?

Now this map clap-trap is clearly an untenable recipe for taxi hacks, street-people and perpetually confused kettle-heads like myself. Why is it so hard to mix up a few random Romanic letters with a dash of hyphen and add some flavorful expressions to make-up an easily memorable, half-baked yet original street name? My family happily looks forward to the day when I will be able to sanely drive my pickled brain to the intersection of ‘FIRST light’ & ‘STATE-of-mind’ without the need for a wrinkled map or a straight jacket. The goal of course is to eventually navigate, and hopefully legally parallel park, with NORMAL people, along a very busy but narrow ROCKY road called ‘MAINstream’.

Pump and Circumstance

After a big Mexican meal and Bromo, I do pump my own gas. So despite the fact that I don’t drive as regularly as most people, I am still generally familiar with the process of fueling stuff including suspicions, rumors, and a college-aged kid. Today however, I was having trouble with a pump NOT pumping despite my best effort to make nice with the nozzle to deliver the drizzle.

When did these machines become so complicated? I had to choose a financial purchasing method, decline a car wash, and request a transaction receipt ALL PRIOR to actually swiping a credit card (from another guy) for payment. Not only did I have to decide on a grade of gasoline to top my tank’s drinking habit, but I also found out that sunshine and Sprite quenches my personal thirst for life as well. Even better, if I ever decide to slow smoke my sack o’ cellulite, there is a whole DOLLAR with my name on it if I buy three packs of cancer sticks in exchange for my diaphragm’s dwindling last tar-laced hack.

With so many life-changing decisions and commerce-inducing opportunities, even at the speed of light, you can imagine what a ‘slo-mo’ world of wonder buying gas is for cave-bound creatures like me? I would read the little matrix display screen and punch a button. Then the machine would beep, bleat, but never speak its domineering demands with a fanciful flash. I would stare, study and bump yet more buttons on the pump in hopes of quenching its seemingly insatiable appetite for human touch. No wonder aliens don’t want citizenship – buying gas in this country has become much harder than getting fake UFO insurance or voting multiple times on their own lifeless planets.

Despite all the attention and coaxing I had rendered, the machine stood stiff like the lip of a Royal guard. What do I have to do to beg for a jar of low-lead for my moped - buy this persnickety gassy-hose a dinner and a movie? I checked the nozzle and wondered if the station’s tank and my luck were running on empty? Probably more likely, this was some devious Shell game designed to force the pricier high octane Molotov juice on ‘dimwitting’ pumping patrons like me?

Apparently not though, because seeing the protracted and befuddled struggle on my ‘muggle’ proved too much even for the patience of the uncooperative machine. Sounding a bit sorry, irritated, and bored all at the same time, the pump finally succumbed to my dogged problem-solving charm to simply speak LOUDLY for all near to hear - "Uh … lift the LEVER to turn the pump on !" “Cheeky pushy Pump” I thought – “ I hardly know you” - I liked our relationship a lot better when you were MUTE!

Seeing Red

Unfortunately, since I have found myself staring at a lot of car rear-ends lately I am getting feverish, frustrated, and a serious case of ‘metal-envy’. No I’ve not gone mad for stop-light ‘BOOTy’ or even got all that angry actually; it’s probably just the bloodshot eyes that are making me delightfully whiney and seeing red. Yes, the allure of driving was fun 30 years ago when I had a one- track mind, but these days piloting a motor car seems to be just a distraction from all the stuff that I am really good at. Given my work history, sadly that must mean I am an excellent and attentive driver.

Unlike humans, automobiles born today essentially all look, smell and behave much the same. Cars may all be branded, colored, and sized differently but just like sugary candy and cough-drops, too much has got to be a BAD thing. I bet if I look underneath all of the stupid modern cars, next to their ‘Fruit of the Loomies’ they will actually have ‘Jelly Belly’-button logos imprinted on them. Whatever happened to cars with real angled metal parts, beltless seats, chrome, and oh I don’t know just for fun - some personality? I don’t need no ‘steenking’ safety stuff – the only airbag in my car should be ME - after a jumbo burrito brunch.

Maybe it is the four rubber wheel thing that is throwing me off? Would it be so bad to mount a ‘lazy susan’ or two under a car or at least a pair of tank treads to try ANYTHING different? Even fish happily embrace a little diversity just to break up the boring bubbles every now and then. How else could you explain the Marty Feldman good looks of the hammerhead shark or those ‘suckers’ of the sea – the octopus.

Hey it’s not like I’m asking for much. I know cars won’t grow fins, swim, or sprout wings to fly anytime soon. I’m no dummy – according to that minty fresh Scope’s trial, stuff like that might take ions to evolve. But before turning hopelessly pruney, I would like for once to sit in traffic and stare at something other than a monotone boring box adorned in RED lights. Oops, sorry – I apparently got distracted AGAIN by my oversized in-dash radio and ‘heavy metal’ 8-track player.

The Car Vs. Plane college experiment

This last week, I got to experience first-hand the juxtaposition of cross country travel by car and the reverse of the trip by aeroplane. By the way that is the same thing as an ‘airplane’, however I just ate a crumpet and my tea-stained teeth allow me to a think and feel British. Despite being literally shoehorned into my daughter’s car in the ‘shoe’ section,(which is next to the ‘party dress’ section) it was a pleasant trip back to college. I never did find the ‘study hard and save money’ section on the seating chart so I doubt one exists, though I will remain hopeful for the time being.

My daughter drives a convertible, however this trip is never as pleasant for her since she cannot lower the top for fear of losing both the shoe and party section ‘occupants’ to the wind’s fickle whimsy. I personally appreciate the protection from the sun, dirt, and hot winds in a car with a lid on it, plus I really don’t look too attractive ‘topless’. Though a 16 hour drive seems horrible, we try to break up the monotony by counting Indian casinos and sleepy truckers along the way. Amazingly, the strategy works as the drive only feels like 15 hours – Wheeee! My daughter also has the convenience of a DVD screen which pops out of the car dash so we can watch public service messages of the danger of driving distracted along with other sitcoms.

To haul all of that junk to college costs about $120 in fuel - $85 for the gasoline and $35 for the two of us in food. To fly back to St. Louis it cost about the same, but oddly, the flight attendants still would not allow me to travel topless. I did have the pleasure to be sandwiched in between two handsome women, however I think it was against their will? Given the typical tight quarters in airline travel these days, I probably should have bought one of those ‘I-Pad’ thingys rather than a widescreen laptop. But buying ‘I-Pads’ embarrasses me too much because they sound so much like feminine products (and only cost a little bit more).

Anyway, I enlisted the help of my seat partners as the lady on the left could take care of the ‘Caps Lock’ side of the keyboard and the lady on the right handled the ‘Enter’ side keys. My role in the middle was very limited as I simply had to dictate the necessary idiocy for a few bloggy paragraphs in between in-flight peanuts and tomato juice. All told, my trip home by plane took about 5 hours including my gate waits, and a few hundred extra seconds (as well as calories) from Dunkin Donuts.

A reasonable hypothesis and expectation is that you would think hands down the airplane trip is the clear winner for cost vs. time in the Car vs. Plane experiment. The truth is, NOTHING beats the chance to spend a few extra hours with the kid before she starts back at life’s grind toward adulthood. No I’m not actually THAT sentimentally sweet with political correctness - it just has become necessary since my unfortunate ‘copy-cat incident’ exiting the plane via the emergency slide. I must be just 'plane' crazy - WHEEEEEE!

ANIMAL LOVER

I like animals of all kinds but I am not what you would call an ‘animal lover’. When I was a kid I had warm and fuzzy pets like two snails named Sydney and Tyrone, an occasional carnival goldfish, and a green baby aquatic turtle named after my favorite Jane Fonda movie, ‘Salmonella’. I had a couple of dogs over my life but in both cases, after getting to know me, they always seemed to want to run away from my underground electric fence; – so much for that ‘man’s best friend’ palaver.

Aside from a milieu of stray mangy cats over the years, I have preferred mostly noiseless pets so that when they expire, I can use them to flavor soup. I know REAL animal lovers would never ever, dare think about the last sentence much less put it in print, so that is how I am sure I am not one of your ‘ilk’. Now that does not mean I go out of my way to torture animals or avoid petting them. On the contrary on more than one occasion I have fantasized about having a pair of ferrets or maybe mink on the collar of my favorite ‘Mac Daddy’ coat, to go with my pointy-toed alligator boots.

Truly though, I am more of a ‘gatherer’ than a hunter. I am not against hunting warm-blooded food in a cold-blooded way for sport however. That’s why several times a week, I get lost in the local warehouse ‘fight’ club, searching for hot appetizers to sample. Yes, you’ve not seen true animal behavior, until you’ve witnessed first-hand, the white-knuckled pursuit of freebie hand-outs, while beating back legions of gaunt yet ravenous senior-geezers.

As a kid I tried to shoot squirrels but my camera jammed and I missed every time. As a teen in Yorkshire we would hunt for rabbit and pheasant but it was with a Ford Fiesta, not with a gun. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a plate of ‘Ye Olde’ English, skid-mark fiesta stew. Hmmm, I guess if I’m willing to eat road-kill, I must actually be an ‘animal lover’ after all? More likely though, I’m just a hillbilly gourmet, who just happens to live in mainstream Missouri!

** Afterword **

Hey speaking of ‘animals’, I sadly must return my own ‘daughter-unit’ to her college cage back in San Antonio this coming week. So being the charitable yet increasingly lazy, ‘big blog-dog‘ for the Monologues, I have arranged a guest-blogger for your light-hearted yet strangely hard-headed reading pleasure next week. Yes, I have asked my ‘liver-spotted’ and dearest mentor / landscaper (code-named ‘RAKER’) to fill-in during my absence.

If this guy could speak English he would have his own blog, but fortunately for you he learned to write highly elegant ransom notes while in a Cuban prison. The rehabilitation (as well as his victims) have paid off handsomely, so he now works cheap and I did not have to pay his normal 2.99 pesos per minute phone rate for ‘stimulating’ blog conversation. Please be on your best behavior for my ‘bloggy-guest’, because he surely won’t be on his. Don’t use too many ‘big and small’ words in your comments, because ‘Raker’ is highly sensitive about his enormous waistline and teensy tiny ‘pin head’. Consider yourself warned and now Deputized. I will see you in a week. – W.C.C.

A REALLY Big Wheel

You know technology has come a long way since the advent of the wheel. I get frustrated like everyone else with traffic and cars, especially when I need to get somewhere and the rest of the world doesn’t. At one point in our lives we got a unicycle to practice on while chewing gum, because you never know when vaudeville acts will be the next BIG thing. We never mastered the thing but every day I tried, it made me thankful that most of the time, multi-wheeled transportation is my preferred cup of tea.

Now don’t start calling me piggish for using so many resources just to buy a slab of bacon and an afternoon Slurpee at 7-11. I still ride bikes once in awhile and the top half of me always enjoys it. In fact, if I don’t have to ride with fanatics who dress in bright neon spandex and ride 50 miles per day at a full clip, even the lower half of my body enjoys bicycling. The problem is that apparently that big rump roast right in the middle, has a mind of its own. Apparently it does not appreciate that skinny little seat wedging itself into my ‘tenderloin’ to ‘STEAK’ its claim.

Now I do not think I’m alone in this complaint because even thin people and more experienced riders complain too. If these bicycle seats are so great why don’t they mount them on motorcycles or in the ‘coach’ section on airplanes? I did ride a 90cc motorcycle once around college but given my ‘Yeti’ physique, it was mostly a necessity to keep up with my wife’s 49cc moped. I have piloted much larger motorcycles on exactly two other occasions and within 5 or 10 minutes both times, helpful strangers had to pick up the bikes off of me so I could continue on my journey. This makes for very slow going when trying to get to work with un-shredded clothing, or bring back home that frosty Slurpee collector’s cup undamaged.

So given my extraordinary ability to learn quickly as well as my coordination, I was never accepted into NASA’s ‘Wheel-o’ training program, but as a consolation they did call me a ‘space cadet’. Yes, I was left back on earth to operate only terrestrial vehicles with more than two wheels, and occasionally those ‘carny’ rides with my tattooed prison mates. Someday, I kind of would like to try and drive a ‘hybrid’ vehicle too - you know the ones, with the fuel economy of a motorcycle, the seating capacity of a car, and the passing speed of a bike. In the 70’s they had already invented that perfect hybrid so go HERE if you want to see it. My wife sent me this clip to taunt me since it reminded her of our typical trips to the Mall together – atop our ultra high-tech BIG WHEEL!

The Changing ‘grill’ of Limousines

It has been many years, when I was young, dumb and owned a limousine. This was not one of these bus-long jobs that the people prefer to rent today, as our car was a ‘normal’ stretched 7 passenger formal. Believe it or not, a couple of decades ago a car with a 145 inch wheelbase was considered fairly large. But check out the link HERE, to see what today’s 10 – 15 passenger limos have morphed into, and you’ll understand that now we’re dealing with a whole new breed of steed.

Stretching cars to excess is probably not as much of surprise as is the introduction of the SUV limo conversion. Now it seems more 4 wheel drive trucks and specialized ‘weird-mobiles’ are being lengthened, tinted, washed & waxed. For a minute there I bet you thought you were at the hair salon or spa huh? I wonder what kind of parties these people are going to that need 4X4 all-terrain limos? Maybe these Deliverance-type ‘special events’ are in the boonies, or ‘big shot celebrities’ prefer to answer the call of nature, by hiring giant 4X4 limousines to help them take ‘VIP’s’ in the woods?

I always loved the romance of owning a limo until I started DRIVING the ‘typical’ people who wanted to rent them. Oh sure once in awhile I’d get a nice couple that just wanted to go to dinner and then out to the theater. But mostly I would get loads of classless drunk people who wanted to drink more and scream out the windows at the Crips and Bloods in bad parts of town. That is always fun to be the only sane one in a suit and helmet, trying to negotiate the ‘rules’ of a rumble between gangbangers and prom rejects. I thought I was just hired to drive - not hold the microphone at a WWF cage match and clean ‘puke’ and goo off my car at 3 A.M. in the morning?

So needless to say I am no longer an entrepreneurial chauffeur & limousine magnate. Without all the French words that means, I’m not magnetically ‘attracted’ to limousines like bugs seem to be to those hanging ‘purple-light, screened zapper things’. Chauffeurs are like glorified bus jockeys and cabbies in a combat zone. So when I forget what my limo-life was like, I simply look at those dingy yellow cabs stuck outside the airport for hours on end. That’s the perfect representation of a job which mainly requires you to ‘hurry up and wait’ but with a little more polish (or other favorite type hot dog) … and oh yeah – a really COOL hat!

Lindsay Lohan Lowdown

I have no real ‘stake’ in the Lindsay Lohan hub-bub, though the girl could probably use some precious protein that a tasty T-Bone could provide. Except when she is having a serious heart to heart with a bottle of liquor, Lohan always looks a little gaunt and malnourished. Let me just say right up front I know a little bit about substance abuse, since I use crushed red pepper on nearly everything I consume.

Clearly all of Lindsay’s problems started with those wax lips that are stuck to her face. Hey I understand, because when I was her age I loved all kind of wax candies, but especially those little bottles with colored sugar water in them. Considering Lohan’s DUI arrests, it is pretty clear that she likes her colored bottles too, but much, MUCH bigger. So since Ms. Lindsay loves LOTS of BARS, Los Angeles County decided to set her up with a ‘big girl’s’ bunk and a stainless commode, behind some really good iron ones.

I am not sure if ‘listy’ Lohan is a Mean Girl, but she may become one quick if she starts a full blown de-tox while serving her entire 90 days sentence locked up in the can. Oh who am I kidding, Hollywood folks aren’t expected to spend their valuable time in jail when they do bad things. Those rules, along with ‘shiv’ and soap sculpting class are for OTHER people with REAL skills. Yes, before Lohan’s orange jump-suit was on (with hopefully some skivvies), and her jail door zip tie was pulled taut, a deal on the down-low was surely in the works for reduced jail-time. C’mon, you don’t want to overcrowd jails – stick criminals in downtown urban barrios where they have loads of extra space and little if any crime right?

Oh yeah, I completely agree with that logic. No sense keeping tinsel town abusers locked up when it is so much more fun to read about their exploits and foibles in supermarket tabloids. Yep, it’s my philosophy to put folks like Lohan and those ‘HOT LIPS’ of hers to work off their debt to society, in their local community. I’m thinkin’ given her history, she could weave in and out of traffic piloting one of those Hollywood Boulevard tourist buses, in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the WAX museum.

Never walk in circles

Have you ever had one of those days that you just want to rewind and start over? No harm, no foul – just everybody go back to your marks and let’s try to get it right this time. My daughter’s car would not start right away last night, so I kind of prepared myself mentally for today’s inevitable trials. You know the drill, - make an appointment at the car shop; get the car tucked in with a probe in its tailpipe; and then find a ride back home to wait it out. Then comes the tearful goodbyes as I try to spend some quality time with my money. We try to be brave, but we’ve known each other far too long to try and lie to one another. There is no way to sugar coat it, soon ‘Franklins, Grants, n’ Jacksons’ and I will be parting ways - never to see each other again. Goodbye old friends – I will miss your cocaine-laced embrace.

So today starts out as planned and I give up my car to the kid so she can get to work. After my daughter leaves, I get ready to take her car in and amazingly the beast starts up perfectly without issue. As wonderful as that sounds, I groan, because the only thing WORSE than an electrical problem is an INTERMITTENT electrical problem. I set my negativity aside and already feel a little encouragement however. If I had to have the car towed out of one of the garages, it would have been very hard to get a giant flatbed up on the apron, so since the car was on the road - things were already looking up! I motored happily along for all of 1 mile when the car suddenly shut down. I guided the 4-wheeled paperweight gently to the curb in front of a house that happened to be for sale, on an attractive suburban neighborhood street.

I was not too exasperated since I told you that I had steeled myself previously for just such good fortune. I called the Auto Club and they told me a truck would arrive within 45 minutes. I don’t believe them. In the past 45 minutes usually means they will arrive in 35 minutes on the outside. I really need to use the restroom but I am a mile from home in one direction and a mile from a park porta potty in the other. I briefly think about all the diuretics I had for breakfast, then I think about asking to use the restroom of the house that’s for sale. I ultimately decide it is not the best way to meet new neighbors, so I choose to walk instead and try to forget my dilated bladder. I can’t risk trying to get to my house and back before the flatbed truck arrives, so I essentially walk in big circles around my car.

Now despite over 275 blog stories which prove otherwise, I am not an idiot. I know it is not exactly normal behavior for a middle aged geezer to be walking in a race track pattern up and down the street, reversing course and doing it all over again … and again … and … But at the same time, I’m clearly no threat. It’s hot out and I’m sweating like a big warmed over suckling pig. I am careful not to loiter too long in front of anyone’s home so they don’t get concerned that a sweaty yeti is on the loose. My daughter’s car is a conspicuously bright red convertible and therefore a lousy 'get-away' car. It also barely holds people much less contraband or 'ham-Burglar' tools – so what’s to fear?

Well apparently quite a bit because, though I had only been walking in circles for about 15 minutes, I first noted a County police car slowly pass me and then another police car behind him. As they went up about a block they made a ‘U turn’ and headed back my way. By that time, a Paddy Wagon police truck pulled up behind me and in front of my disabled car. I kept walking calmly but knew what was coming. The first two policemen pulled behind my car and made a visit to the ‘house for sale’. By then I had rounded my race track and was walking back towards the whole gaggle of County servants. One policeman crossed the road to intercept me politely but with his right hand clearly resting on his holster.

I have to admit I was none too pleased and less receptive to public interrogation than usual. (One tiny murder spree and the police seem to hold that against you forever) I was polite but obviously curt and disgusted. Jeez, couldn’t you have waited at least 30 minutes into my walk to break up the monotony a little? Now all of the excitement is front loaded and I will be bored until the Auto Club gets here. Apparently I checked out ok because the police quickly determined I was not going to hurt the occupant of that house with the sign in the lawn. I told the cop “The house is for sale – all kinds of unknown people will be hanging around it for the next 3 months”. Thank goodness my daughter did not have some horrible outstanding warrant on the car that she had forgotten to mention. As the police officer started to walk back to his car, I told him to let the worried lady know that ‘I still would be out here skulking around until the truck comes for my car’. He glared at me and said he intended to. I don't think he liked me or he was still suspicious of my intentions. I didn't mean anything by the excessive fidgeting and wild-eyed crazed looks - remember I had to go to the bathroom!

93 minutes I trod the sidewalks until that dumb Auto Club truck came. I cannot tell you how happy I was to get away from that stupid house that was for sale. Part of me wants to take a check over for the full purchase price of that dump and TEAR IT UP in front of the owner’s face and tell her I would have bought the place until she called the cops on me. I have a better idea though. Every day for the next month or so, I am going to tow some kind of registered vehicle I own and park it in front of her house. Who knows, I may even get some illegal aliens and we will sell tacos and schnitzel there too? Surely someone around her needs a big old truckload of manure to fertilize their lawn right? I know where she lives and I know she won’t mind any of it – as long as I don’t walk in circles around her house.

Boo-tiful Girl

My kid has been working on a kind of a tropical project around the house. So today she came in dragging these hunks of giant bamboo shoots that she needs cut in half lengthwise to use as sort of an edge trim. I have become immune to her artistic proclivities by now so anything seems normal even if it isn’t. Uh, I guess she forgot that we do not live in Hawaii or even Florida. The only bamboo and sand we see around here is in the cat litter box display at Petland.

Anyway, I think I can cut her giant 'BOO' poles on a table saw or probably better yet with a saber saw. What strikes me though is how versatile these big tubes could be, even beyond her trim application. Honestly they look like big straws to me. I cannot tell you how much I wanted to stick one of those into a vast vat of milk and start attempting to draw up a mouthful of cow.

Obviously if that is not weird enough, I wondered how much toilet paper I would have to wad and chew up to make a half-way decent spit wad. I doubt I have the lung capacity to motivate anything out of that big tube but I bet my compressor could do the job. Is this the kind of stuff Hawaiian’s think about all day when tromping through those giant racking bamboo forests or is this just a Missouri problem?

I hope my kid has a couple of bamboo ends left over. I am thinking they would make very unique, exhaust tip extensions for my car. Maybe if I drill a few holes in those tropical tubes the car will sound like a motorized recorder hooting all the way down the street. Bamboo in Missouri – is that even legal? I’ll never understand why, but I have to admit it, my kid is so weird – I think she gets it from her mother.

McBlogger Pilot

Ok just so you don’t think I am a lifeless vampire who never leaves the confines of my bat cave to blog, I actually took a little road trip yesterday. Yes I drove 160 miles one way to track down my wife who is flying all over the ‘right’ half of the country in an air race.

I am not complaining as it was nice to get away from my hutch and see some of the countryside in full summer bloom. Fortunately the air conditioning in the car was working though as it was just plain sweaty hot everywhere I went. I found the wife under the plane studying bug stains or something pilots have to worry about. She was airing out the cockpit and herself as the crew flies ‘ventless’ to increase airspeed. So that’s why all those egocentric pilots think they’re so ‘ HOT’.

I took lots of photos and we got a chance to chat for an hour or so while the airport fueled the beast and the crew waited for favorable tailwinds between Chicago thunderstorms. It was actually a pleasure to pay $250 for fuel this time since the credit card company midway through the race DECLINED the card. They had suspected fraud because how could somebody be using the same credit card in 4 or 5 states in less than 24 hours? It is not so hard to do when life literally ‘flies’ by!

After the wife and her partner took off and buzzed the tower to officially start the race clock, I got back in my much slower and delightfully chilly car. Shortly thereafter, I drove to a local McDonalds to upload my pictures and post to the air race blog. I kind of liked the different atmosphere of sitting in public, looking out the McWindow while I typed. It feels strangely liberating to be free and wireless in a foreign place but doing very familiar things – sort of like a pilot only a lot COOLER!