Crack! The Windshield Kind

David and I were fifty miles up I-75 from home when one of those thousand trucks that are on the Interstate, riding in the left lane (which I am pretty sure is against the law)and hauling stuff, usually hidden under tarps, also suspect, threw up a rock and made a crack in the windshield of my car on the passenger side where I was sitting.

Thwack!

I looked about for a wild, out of control Yankee with a gun, headed home [who knew we were traveling his way].... but nope -- it must have been one of those sixteen wheelers hauling nineteen thousand Dixie cups, or Quik Fix concrete, or canned peaches.

Harrumph.

We will travel a couple thousand miles with a a quarter sized hole right above eye level on the windshield passenger side front.

Ominous? You decide as I shall blog ....

I have to admit that a couple of hours after the THWACK on the windshield -- I drew some comfort from dinner at the Cracker Barrel in Knoxville, TN, where I consumed two biscuits and gravy and mash potatoes... amazing what lard will make you forget ---

I think it could be called "hardening of the arteries."

With our cracked windshield, we're gonna show these Pittsburgh thugs what an Atlanta thug looks like -- riding up here in our car, bullet holed and bug splattered.

Did you know "thug" came from the Hindu?

BTW: Don't people pay money for fake bullet holes that can be adhered to the car -- to make yo ride look --- like you have been in a gun fight?

*scratches head*

I remember how much I hated those stuffed Garfields, spread eagle and plastered with little suction cups on a window of the car -

I think it was because I hated Garfield -- and really never saw the humor in the comic strip. Was he funny? Or just lame?

Just not funny to me -- maybe bullet holes would be funnier? Except not.

Anyway, David and I are now officially thuggish.

Did you know that people from Pittsburgh do not say "Steelers"? They love their "Stillers." I ask one lady at the rehearsal dinner if that was a "professional" football team? I thought she was gonna toss her Italian sausage at me.

Ha. I'm no Yinzer.

[you'll need to look that up in your Pittsburghese.....]

Back to the first part of the trip:

I usually read when David and I take a car trip, but when we go somewhere new, like we are all this trip, I feel the need to have a running commentary.

David doesn't need it.

Just sayin'.

BTW: I have this TripTik from Triple A, which, let me go on record to say, does not necessarily hire the sharpest people, of the three who apply, to put together these Triptiks maps for their AAA members (not AA, junk heads). I dealt with Triple A on three different occasions by phone, each time getting another flunkie, and they still didn't do what all I needed or get it correct.

Geesh.

For example, there is a Francine (last name left off to protect the innocent/unknown) who was traveling to Bridgeport, Connecticut, from her happy abode in Atlanta, whose TripTik I found in the middle of my own.

So, my TripTik begins in Marietta, but when it directs me to Knoxville, I turn the page, and then the map says, "beginning from Columns Drive prepared for sterling Triple AA member Francine" to Bridgeport, Connecticut. I follow Francine's trip to Bridgeport, and then I turn the page, and I'm back in Knoxville.

Dumb dweebs. Geez. You can't make this kind of stuff up....

I should have stuck with my folded map of the Southeastern United States, put out by the Interstate system.

Poor Francine -- still sitting on Columns Drive waiting on her TripTik.

Sorry, Francine, about your TripTik -- I didn't know that yours was in the middle of mine till I was already on my way... for Triple A, you just need to pay for the road service.

David: You need to call corporate about those yahoos at Triple A.
Me: You call them. I find that the automated numbers I get on those type of phone calls usually leads me to someone who didn't make the "A" team.

So....

I kept a running commentary for David on what I was seeing off and on the interstate. I am particularly fascinated by what tractor trailers haul.

Coffee in tankers.
Tires for Humvees on Jupiter.
Pipes for the Alaskan pipe line.
The chassis for a ferris wheel.

They haul some big as well as random stuff.

Joe: I need fourteen thousand gallons of maple syrup, pronto.
Trucker: I'm on my way -- after I kick some rocks at some windshields.

David is fairly uninterested in my commentary. He only points at cars on the road that he could afford if he married, you know, wealthy.

He finds me distracting and boring. *shrugs*

He told me to be quiet a couple of times. *wth?*

I couldn’t figure out why…. I mean why wouldn’t you want to know that we just passed a Kia with one of those magnetic signs that said, “Hypnosis Works” ? I didn't look at the driver, you know, in case he was swinging his pocket watch at me from his window.

David said if I could snap my fingers and make you bark... then it might be interesting.

*bow wow*

That's all I got.

ETA: I wrote part of this blog on 10/07/10 -- but I've been so busy....