|
Page 3 of 762 pages « First < 1 2 3 4 5 > Last »
June 2008
|
Cruise Control Means Not Hitting Your Target
by McGehee
...however much he may deserve it.
The recent cross-country drive was my first real long-distance opportunity to enjoy the use of cruise control. I already knew it wasn’t helpful on congested highways, which means just about any paved surface within 200 miles of here, but on the relatively uncongested rural interstates of the western U.S. I rather quickly developed one simple technique that enabled me to avoid most possible negative interactions with other drivers:
I settled on keeping the cruise set to one or two MPH above the posted limit. Generally speaking, unless there’s a crackdown ordered from on-high most troopers won’t bother someone who’s within a few ticks of what the signs say, as long as they’re driving safely otherwise. Since my top priority was to minimize maneuvers, I needed a setting that would enable me to pass the excruciatingly law-abiding, who tend to bunch up in packs—while also allowing the more daring to glide smoothly on by whenever they overtook me. The 67- or 72-mph bracket is very little occupied and was almost perfect for me. It left only three categories of drivers for me to be concerned about: - The occasional driver just like me who had sought and found the same in-between “sweet spot,” and who thus threatened to bunch up with me if I didn’t manage to shake him loose and put more distance between us.
The seemingly increasingly rare long-haul driver who either doesn’t have, or prefers not to use, cruise control—and who is too inattentive to maintain consistent, predictable driving behavior. These tended to exhibit wide variations of speed, requiring me first to pass them, then to let them pass, and quite often to find some way to shake them loose and get away from them. On more than one occasion I had to do this repeatedly to the same driver, using different tactics until one finally worked. In Kentucky I even had to exit the highway and take a lunch break to get rid of one especially egregious idiot.
Slightly-faster, cruise-using drivers who hadn’t learned good passing etiquette. The number of offenses in this category could merit a post of its own, but the worst is committed by those who crawl past the vehicle on their right, especially when several other cars are lined out behind them, also wanting to pass. Next worst is, after crawling past the slower vehicle, FAILING TO GET BACK OVER TO THE RIGHT. I avoided cruising in the left lane. When passing another vehicle that was moving at a speed too close to my cruise setting, I used my gas pedal to speed up at least a little even when there was no one else on the road. I always made sure I left plenty of space between me and the other vehicle before I moved back over, and I gently eased up afterward to let the cruise re-engage. And then I kept an eye on the vehicle I’d just passed to make sure the space between us was getting wider rather than narrower.In Kentucky (what is it about Kentucky?) I watched a guy (not the one mentioned above) in a pickup actually run another car off the road after he discovered that tailgating me wasn’t going to make me go any faster than the cars ahead of me were going. The car he tangled with was able to avoid leaving the paved shoulder and recovered almost immediately—but I was sure the guy in the pickup was going to end up killing somebody eventually.
If he did, I wasn’t around for it. He somehow managed to get through the congestion and disappear into the distance. At the freeway accident scene we passed in Nashville I looked for his truck but didn’t see it.
Since moving here and dealing with Atlanta-area freeways I’ve watched my opinion of big-rig drivers go from generally positive to generally negative, but the overwhelming majority of those encountered on this trip were no trouble at all. We did see a trucker defy the requirement to exit the highway for a brake inspection on I-24 before descending the steep grade at Monteagle, Tennessee, but that was the worst of it. I think if the freeways around here are just too congested for my nerves, they’re probably affecting the pros too.
[Me]
|
|
You Know What?
by McGehee
I’m starting to think Bill Engvall was wrong. We don’t need for stupid people to carry signs warning us who they are. We need for people who do actually have two working brain cells to rub together, to carry signs letting us know they’re not stupid.
Ever since John McCain clinched the GOP nomination, I’ve been watching as otherwise intelligent-seeming Republicans have been trying to come up with his ideal running mate. Almost every one has been either a woman or someone with other than European heritage.
As a short-term, pandering response to Barack Obama’s nomination, it makes a kind of cold-blooded, winning-is-the-only-thing kind of sense—but as just one more rabbit-punch to the idea of America as a cohesive society, it’s the kind of attitude that makes me think the Founding Fathers were wrong, that we have failed them irreversibly and perhaps were fated to do so.
It wouldn’t bother me so much if so many of those whose names have been floated, were not already out of the running for one reason or other, either because they don’t want it or because McCain would never risk being overshadowed by such an attention-getting choice.
Today I saw one too many “it’s not rocket science” arguments for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be McCain’s running mate, completely ignoring that SHE HAS A NEWBORN SON WITH DOWN’S SYNDROME and therefore more important things to do than gallivant all over the country on a speculative bid for an office she doesn’t want, and where she will never be as effective nor as popular as she is right there in Juneau where her constituents overwhelmingly want her to stay.
I’m content to wait for McCain to make his choice. I’ll give him one last chance to impress me and make me think maybe I’ve been too quick to reject him. If there’s one positive thing I can say about him it’s that he’ll make his own damn choice regardless what anybody else says. Hell, he could potentially earn my vote by choosing a running mate that just totally pisses me off. Or, you know, he could just totally piss me off and make me more determined than ever to avoid voting for him.
But if he panders—to identity politics or to me—I definitely wouldn’t vote for him.
Come on, you people: we conservatives didn’t get in this fix by being smart. We got here because somewhere along the line we stopped being smart.
Unrelated: And the past tense of “wreak” is not “wreaked,” it’s wrought! Seeing “wreaked” in place of “wrought” overwreaks me something fierce. Not to mention, it reeks.
[People] [Here's Your Sign] [Government] [Politics] [Elections] [Election 2008]
|
|
11:08 am Saturday
June 14, 2008
No backtalk
|
A ‘True’ Philly—in Illinois!?
by McGehee
I was first introduced to the “Philly"-style cheesesteak while living in Fairbanks. Almost every “standard” cheesesteak I’ve ever eaten had melted Swiss cheese on it.
In 2004 I discovered—at the exact same moment John Kerry did—that a “true” Philly uses Cheez Whiz™ rather than any, like, real cheese. Certainly not Gruyere or Camembert.
We have a Steak ‘n’ Shake restaurant in Newnan, where Chris and I sometimes like to go and eat. Unless it’s breakfast time, I almost always opt for the double steakburger. But in Lincoln, Illinois on the last day of our driving vacation, we had lunch at a Steak ‘n’ Shake embedded in a truck stop, and just for the heck of it I ordered the “Philly” steakburger.
Now, a “Philly” that involves an intact meat patty is no more “true” than one that uses melted Swiss. But it did have Cheez Whiz.
Sorry, Philadelphia, but I think I like ‘em better with the Swiss. But I’ll make a deal with you: I’ll never again order a so-called “Philly” at Hardee’s, where they gave it to me with <puke> mayonnaise.
[Me] [Humor?] [Mayo? NAY!]
|
|
7:27 pm Friday
June 13, 2008
No backtalk
|
I Wonder If I’ll Really Hold Out Until Then?
by McGehee
87°F. and partly cloudy in Coweta County, GA
My first real blog post was put up on May 3, 2002. I’ve been at this now for 73½ months, give or take.
On May 3, 2009 I will have been blogging for seven years. I think that if I ever for real stop blogging, that would be the day it happens.
I suspect I’d be retired-on-active-duty long before then. As in, since about a year ago.
[Me] [Boreblogger Nirvana™]
|
|
999 Words to Go [Updated]
by McGehee
I think before I can write up the vacation, I need to get pictures posted. And that may mean I’ll have to not wait for my wife to do whatever it was she wanted to do with her pictures before they could be posted.
She managed to take some on the abortive mountain hike hinted about here, including the one from which I took the new header pic above, before the battery in her camera died. And we also got some good ones while driving around—I guess the day before the hike.
I have some impressions from various other points in our travels, such as the annoyance of finding that one of the hotels we stayed at had installed overly shallow toilet bowls. I’m pretty sure they weren’t hanging in the water, but I can’t be 100% positive of that. Don’t they, like, test the things before they install them?
Hmmm. Testing toilet bowls for proper depth. What do you suppose a job like that pays?
Update: Pics from the trip are up.
[Me]
|
4:12 pm Tuesday
June 10, 2008
» McGehee
|
...…home, hot home
It’s 90° here at Castle McGehee right now, and the humidity feels like 90%. And of course we left the A/C turned all but off during our absence, so guess what it’s like inside?
Thank goodness for fans.
[Me] [Asides]
|
|
10:00 pm Sunday
June 8, 2008
No backtalk
|
Mostly Home
by McGehee
85°F. and fair in Chattanooga, TN
We’re in Chattanooga, as predicted. Our dog and at least two of our cats have deigned to recognize us. We have things to do tomorrow and then we cart the whole kit and kaboodle home on Tuesday.
I might write up the trip; a lot of interesting stuff happened that I haven’t already written about. Or I might not write it up. Likewise, pictures.
This has turned out to be one of those vacations where you kind of need to take time off to recuperate afterward.
[Me]
|
|
7:38 pm Saturday
June 7, 2008
No backtalk
|
Winding Down
by McGehee
89°F. and sunny in Mt. Vernon, IL
I’m very much ready now to be someplace where I know I won’t have to pack up everything and hit the road again anytime soon.
Tomorrow we get to Chattanooga, where we’ll stay a couple of nights with Chris’ mom, and get re-acquainted with our dog and three cats. Then we load them and us and our stuff and go home.
I think I’m probably caught up on traveling for at least a week or so.
[Me]
|
|
Don’t Know Why There’s No Sun Up in the Sky
by McGehee
70°F. and cloudy in Marshalltown, IA
Today while driving through Nebraska we saw some scattered storm damage. Our hotel in Lexington had been spared serious storminess last night as the line moving through the area parted almost exactly where we were. We saw lightning and had some rain, but I never heard thunder.
Tonight as we sit in our hotel room in Marshalltown, resting up from the longest day of driving yet on this trip (if it isn’t, it feels like it), Chris has a Des Moines TV station on, with non-stop coverage of storm activity in the southwestern quarter of the Hawkeye State. Almost all during the drive the sky has been overcast, and the air beneath the clouds has been too hazy at times to see more than a mile or two—in a part of the country where the horizon should be dozens of miles distant. It made the worst city smog I’ve ever seen look downright sparkly.
Twice on this trip we paid as little as $3.699 a gallon for regular—first at a tribe-owned truck stop south of Riverton, Wyoming, then at an Albertsons gas station in Laramie where we benefited from a no-card three-cent discount from the advertised price. Once we got to Nebraska, regular was firmly over $4 a gallon, but mid-grade was in the $3.70 neighborhood because of ethanol content. Corn-belt states like Nebraska and Iowa apparently exempt ethanolized gasoline from gas taxes.
What’s more, west of Des Moines I could have filled the tank with E85 for less than $3 a gallon—if only a 1998 Taurus were flex-fuel capable. (If somebody tells me now that it is, I’m going to cry.)
Tomorrow is a family day. Of my late dad’s three surviving siblings, two live here and my Uncle John will be 90 next month (which is a big part of why we included Marshalltown on this tour).
We expect to be home Tuesday. I wonder what it’ll be like not to live out of a suitcase?
[Me]
|
Page 3 of 762 pages « First < 1 2 3 4 5 > Last »
|
|
