Category: Travel

Driving Home

In another life I might have been a truck driver or a race driver or even a cab driver. The act of driving is one I thoroughly enjoy. Others seem oblivious, though, to the joys.

One afternoon this week I sat at a stop light and watched as the twenty-something woman in the car next to mine immediately slouched into her seat and began texting on her phone once her brakes fully engaged. 

For a few seconds I watched her intently typing a message–most likely something earth shattering like, “LOLZ!” Or “WTF man?!” before I scanned the other traffic around me that included an unevenly loaded trailer two cars ahead and a motorcycle with a dangerously low tire in front of my texting friend. In addition a group of elderly pedestrians was crossing at the indicated walkway a few car lengths in front of me.

My texting friend noted none of this. In fact, once the light changed to green she continued to sit and text only moving forward when those behind her began honking their displeasure.

This isn’t a treatise on safe driving; although, as a motorcyclist few things infuriate me more than a driver who texts while behind the wheel. No, this is a post about noticing one’s surroundings and enjoying the drive.

Many years ago (I might’ve even been a teenager!) I read a fluff piece in a doctor’s office magazine about the connection between women and driving. The magazine, I recall, was a religious publication, perhaps Guidepost, or something similar. Something about that article stuck with me all these years, even though I couldn’t quote a single word from it if my life depended on it.

The heart of the article was that women had gained a great deal of freedom in the preceding decades (this was probably written in 1975) and that perhaps the greatest freedom outside of being able to vote was that of being able to drive, and with that freedom came great responsibility.

The author of the article noted that female drivers always looked proud and responsible, that they seemed particularly aware of their surroundings and relished their independence. The author went on to say that since female drivers often had children in tow they seemed to take extra care with their precious cargo and to spend time pointing out interesting and educational sights along their routes.

Perhaps I was young and impressionable, but I took that article at face value and decided that I’d be an exemplary driver–and I probably succeed 85% of the time. 

I enjoy engaging with the road, noting how different driving surfaces interact with my tires. I love solving the puzzle of traffic, figuring out where my vehicle fits into the bigger picture as Car A moves into the space vacated by Car D while avoiding Pedestrians X, Y, and Z. And I’m keen on listening to the engine and how the gears shift in the transmission.

When our children were small I helped them learn to read by calling attention to billboards and signs on the sides of trucks. Our youngest could spell “Toyota” before her third birthday.  And time spent at stop lights wasn’t wasted either as we sang along to the radio or counted the number of blue, or red, or white cars around us.

Maybe my texting friend will at some point look up from her screen and realize there’s more to driving than pressing on the gas pedal and steering the wheel. Let’s just hope she doesn’t get rear-ended before then.

Peace, people!

  

Have Cat; Will Travel

Patches thinks I’ve been gone too much:

Maybe next time I’ll take her along.

 

Random Disney Pictures

I snapped quite a few pictures at Disneyworld this week. Some were even worth sharing!

These were from the ¡Vamos! parade as we entered the Magic Kingdom on Saturday morning.

  
    
    
    

I took these two at The Art of Animation resort where my niece and her family stayed. I have no idea who the child is in the second picture, but he loves Mater!
    

I finally posed with someone who made me feel dainty and attractive. And nervous!
 

Turtle is still prettier than me. Sigh.  
At my hotel there were reminders of my childhood.  
Every now and then these guys at Art of Animation would squawk. Scared me the first time. 

  If I’d taken a photo of every beautiful flower on the Disney properties I’d never have gotten past the front gates. 

  
 
This playground structure looked like a human heart. Apparently it was a coral reef. Who knew they were so similar?  
 I’m home now, but apparently traveled “to infinity and beyond!”  
Peace, people!

Joy In Hereford

Random photos from our week in Hereford, Texas.   
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
   

Pop Culture

Living in Florida comes with certain perks, and for a Disney-phile like myself, being able to get in the car and drive to the Orlando theme parks in just a few hours is definitely one of them.

I’m meeting my niece CB and her family for a weekend at the Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. CB’s family is flying in from Texas and won’t be here until late tonight, but I checked into my room in the Pop Century resort at 1:30 this afternoon and have already been Disneyfied.

   
    
   
The Pop Century Resort is divided by decades. Fittingly, I was booked into the 50’s section and found myself in a retro style hotel room reminiscent of those I stayed in with my family when I was a child. The modern flat screen TV is the only decorative nod to the current decade. 

   
   
I’m relishing the idea of a room to myself for three nights. 

CB, her husband Lord Jeff, and their two children will be staying just across the lagoon at the Art of Animation Resort. I scoped out their hotel this afternoon to see how long it will take me to walk it in the morning. Of course I kept getting sidetracked, so the walk is either ten minutes or an hour and 20 minutes give or take an hour.

These photos are from their resort:

  
    
    

As soon as CB calls in the morning I’ll join her family at The Art of Animation so we can ride a bus to the Magic Kingdom. I’m a few months away from turning 60, but I feel like a giddy kid. 

M-I-C (See you real soon!)

K-E-Y (Why? Because I have a ticket!) 

M-O-U-S-E.

Now if the kids next door will settle down, I’m going to sleep. 

Peace, people!

 

Yazoo City, Mississippi

Studly Doright and I ventured well off the interstates yesterday and found ourselves in Yazoo City around 10:30 last night. We stayed at a nice Hampton Inn where I slept like a champion. I guess 13 hours in a car was conducive to a good night’s rest.

  
Studly just knew there’d be a great little mom and pop diner in Yazoo City, after all, it’s the hometown of country humorist Jerry Clower. Boy, was Studly wrong. We ended up eating at an Iron Skillet restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi, many miles down the road. It was well worth the wait. 

I tried to talk Studly into shopping:

  
He decided he didn’t need a new suit. But my, what a bargain!

Now we’re heading southeast on highway 49. Rolling hills and kudzu covered trees are broken up by small towns with odd names like Little Yazoo and Mish and Seminary. 

After a week of vacation we are both getting anxious to be home. According to the GPS we have another five hours. I’m glad we chose to drive, but if we’d flown we would be home by now.

Peace people!

Window Tripping

I’ve been vacationing in Texas this week and haven’t had an opportunity to do any writing. On a portion of our drive across the state of my birth I began snapping pictures of random sights. 

Carnival rides move from town to town during the summer months. At least I hope that’s what these are.

 Cows. No trees.
 
A working pump jack.

  
Note the trees–a rarity here.

This building was painted like a Holstein cow.    
Quanah, Texas, was named for the great chief Quanah Parker to whom we might or might not be related through Studly Doright’s mother Saint Helen.

Studly’s arm with the American and Texas flags in the background.
   
Railroad ties.


A pair of Harleys. 

Abandoned homes like this dot the panhandle of Texas.  

I liked the name of this business: Faux Pants. I believe this was in Memphis, TX.  

A truck was hauling these unknown objects.     
Small town water tower.

 

The colorful tarp below is most likely a deflated bouncy house.
   
My feet. 
   
This motel was out in the middle of nowhere.

 
A grain elevator.  
  

Prairie with wind turbines in the distance.

  
A close up of a turbine.

  And its antique counterpart:

  
The loop to bypass Amarillo–a sure sign we’ve neared our destination.


 

Note the dried mud on the tailgate of the pickup truck. Clean cars are as rare as trees out here.

Dumas, Arkansas

  
Studly Doright and I are traveling a new route through Arkansas on our way home from Hereford, Texas. We passed a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Dumas, Arkansas, and I snapped a quick photo. Our romance began in a Piggly Wiggly store in Dumas, Texas, over 42 years ago. 

Southern Belle with a Touch of Jackass

Once upon a time I held frequent flyer status on several airlines. My job seemed to keep me in the air more often than I was on the ground. I enjoyed flying, and good memories still outweigh the bad ones. 

My mantra when traveling by air was, “Patience, little jackass,” and I’d whisper it to myself over and over when luggage was lost or flights were delayed or I found myself in the middle seat between Dumb and Dumber. “Patience, little jackass,” is the punchline for a joke I can never remember, and it served me well. Most of the time.

After one particularly trying week, I was stuck in Chicago’s O’Hare airport awaiting my flight home to Studly Doright in Florida when the gate attendant for Northwest airlines announced the 5:15 flight was overbooked and they needed ten passengers to voluntarily give up their seats in return for travel vouchers and a seat on the first flight to Orlando the next day. No one volunteered. 

Every five minutes the gate attendant would repeat the request. Finally she sweetened the pot with an increase in the amount of the voucher, lodging, and shuttle service to and from a nearby hotel. I looked around, dialed Studly, and asked if a delay in my arrival would cause any great distress in his plans. He assured me he’d be ok, so I took the deal.

Nothing about the deal went well. There were no hotels with vacancies anywhere near the airport, so it was 9 p.m. before the plucky band of ten volunteers made it to the reception desk of a hotel thirty minutes away from O’Hare. My mantra was still serving me well, “patience, little jackass,” swirled around in my brain through the checking-in process. I politely bided my time behind the family of five and an elderly couple from my flght. 

When my turn came I graciously asked about our promised shuttle back to the airport in the morning. For our 6:15 flight, we’d need to depart the hotel at 4:30 a.m.

“Our shuttles don’t begin until 6 a.m,” came the response.

“The airline assured us we’d have shuttle service back to O’Hare,” I replied.

“The airline had no right to say that,” came the tight answer. 

By now all the volunteer passengers had gathered behind me, adding their voices to mine.

“You need to contact your manager immediately,” I countered, “We will have a shuttle in the morning at 4:30.”

This continued for a few heated moments before the receptionist contacted her manager. I didn’t give an inch. Bottom line, we got our 4:30 a.m. shuttle. 

On our way to our respective rooms one man, a New Yorker from his accent, stopped me and shook my hand. 

“You went from sweet little Southern Belle to calculating bitch in the blink of an eye, without ever raising your voice. Well done.”

But I didn’t sleep even a wink that night. I had no nightclothes or clean underwear, and only the hotel room toiletries were at my disposal. Worst of all I’d let my patience slip. Argh!

And, to add insult to injury I never got to use that voucher, so narrow were the restrictions attached to it by Northwest. I refuse to fly with them ever again. It’s a personal boycott, and I hope they feel the pinch.

I found this meme on Facebook one morning this week, and it prompted this post. I think it says it all:

  
I do try to keep the bitch, er, jackass, corralled.

Peace, ironically, people.

You Say Tomatoes…

Apparently some say “Tomotoes”–taken in Corpus Christi, TX. 

 
Of course it might be a new food, full of vitamins and minerals and the key to eternal youth. Perhaps I should’ve stopped for a sample. 

Peace, people!