November 14, 2017

Yesteryear
One year ago today: November 14, 2016, it’s been tried.
Five years ago today: November 14, 2012, take the money now.
Nine years ago today: November 14, 2008, I hate network printers . . .
Random years ago today: November 14, 2013, Pecos, Texas.

           Right off the bat, Google sucks. I’m still locked out of my blog, claiming they’ve detected a suspicious device. I’m in a whole building of suspicious devices called the Limbaugh Library in downtown Murfreesboro. I’ll tell you what is suspicious. Google paying so much attention which computer you are using. Here’s the photo of that abandoned station that seems so familiar y’day. But let’s back to this morning. Here is your usual travel log.

           4:45 AM The Perry, Georgia, Wal*Mart parking lot. Wow, as usual the deepest sleeps I get are traveling and the station wagon was both comfortable and quiet. I sprung for some fancy ear stopples but didn’t need them. The car is around equal in comfort to the cPod, but lacks amenities like an overnight fan, LED lighting, and recharging ports. Also, the station part of the wagon has no latch for opening the shagging compartment from the inside. Insert millennial joke here, you know, about how that’s the only way she can’t escape. This is where you save all those LED lighting thingees you get from Harbor Freight. You can’t own too many of those.

           5:45 AM How strange to drive for the first time in years with the car heater on. Get your atlas, I headed west from Perry along Highway 341, the area is a forest trail. But the road is new and smooth, I picked up one of those Wal*Mart veggie snack trays and clamped on the cruise control.

           6:45 AM In my plan to bypass Columbus, GA, I mapped out Highway 16. I could not find a decent map of Columbus, but I found lots of no-so-decent ones showing the road system is below the Orlando standard. A standard so low, the work crews had to post their own signs telling people to please quit using their GPS.

           7:45 AM The towns around here also ceased putting up road signs, so I drove though places like Franklin without knowing it. The town I found nearest to my desired route was called Griffin. But any motorcyclist who has found GPS quite useless can tell you it is freaky how often the exact little road you want is exactly on the seam or staple of the atlas. And these new computer generated atlases have zero overlap between pages.

           8:45 AM Nothing. A wasted hour. See Addendum I stopped for coffee in Griffin, GA. It was lousy.

           9:45 AM Bowden Junction. Another nothing town that mercifully has a bypass. Inhabited by jerks who like to tailgate you in daylight with their high beams on. At least the countryside is getting hilly, which makes for better views but reminds me I’m not on the motorcycle.

           10:45 AM Finally, I’m at a stop point, the town of Summerville. See photo, this is the first mountain pass up ahead on this journey. Like many towns in the area, it is very difficult to read what road and street signs they have, so I didn’t actually stop. The signs are mounted so you can’t see them when you are stuck behind a semi or even a panel van. Often, the signs are right at the intersection, so forget it if you are in the wrong lane when you pull up.

           11:45 AM I stopped and stretched my legs. I’m back on a 4 lane highway, so the scenery is mostly trees and gas stations. It seems strange compared to Miami to travel up to five minutes on a vacant road before any oncoming traffic. See this second road photo. Nobody there. I loved it.

           12:45 PM Google sucks. I pulled into the Chattanooga main library and wasted my $1.00 guest hours trying to convince Google to just leave my blog alone. No dice. The bottom line here is what I warned the world about Google ten or twelve years ago. Their hidden agenda is to get every American Internet user’s true identity on the Google files. Then, they could systematically blackmail 90% of the country.

           1:45 PM Still cussing Google, walking back to my car, where I wasted $2 on parking. To me, Google isn’t worth the two bucks.

           2:45 PM I crossed the Tennessee River at Lookout Mountain. That’s the only portion of this trip I was on an Interstate.

           3:45 PM Turning off the Interstate at exit 174, I took old Highway 41 along the river. It’s too windy to enjoy the view, but you get glimpses of a real river, something we don’t really have in Florida much. Whenever the road crews do any work, they take down the road signs, so I had one twenty minute wrong turn. The old highway does some fancy twisting up and down the mountain ranges, but it is a far more worthwhile drive than the freeway.

           4:45 PM I’m okayed for crashing overnight at the Murfreesboro Wal*Mart. They don’t get as antsy about it as the wankers in Titusville. It was still light, so I’m in the Limbaugh library. I’m signing off now. As you see, the trip by car isolates me from the countryside. I still have time to think, but I imagine other than if you follow in an atlas, this is dry reading. Normally I would have stopped at two attractions, like that mountain railway. As usual, I drove past the signs in less than normal reaction time. Unlike the motorcycle, I won’t brake hard and turn around in those circumstances.

           5:45 PM These are my highly polished Florsheims. I’m not going to the Grand Ole Opry except in my best shoes.

ADDENDUM
           The runaround this morning is already known here as the Zetella hin und zurück. But I can’t think of the English expression that matches. “Round trip” and “there and back” aren’t quite right because the German expression means more like “waste of time”.

           These nothing towns also have no highway savvy. They often put a sign with an arrow saying “Downtown” or “Historic District”, but with no indication how far away that is. This causes the motorist who wants to see it to slow down at every built-up intersection to see if it looks like downtown. This morning in Griffin, I was 200 yards past the turn with no easy way to make a U-turn. I only spotted the turn because I saw a building that looked like a post office.
           So I asked for directions, duh. I think the reason women will ask for directions more often than men is because women necessarily have a far higher tolerance for bullshit. Anyway, I know better than to ask for a road by number, so I asked, “Is that the road to Zetella”, it being the first town on the map. Nope, nobody ever heard of it. Fourteen miles away. Then this old geezer, the “God Bless” type points out the window and says take that road. It, God Bless, goes God Bless, to Zetella, God Bless.

           Why not? Away I went to discover, later, it actually goes to an unmarked intersection some five miles outside of Zetella. Having one chance in three of guessing right, I continued on straight and would up in some backwater called Woolsey. I took one look at their traffic lineups and turned back. Guessing right on the second turn, I wound up actually in the town of Brooks. Now somebody over there has brains. Every street is not only marked, there were signs saying where the roads went. I like the one that said “Highway 85 Connector to Highway 16”.
           That’s in pretty stark contrast to the rest of the state. There are 20 mile stretches without route markers. But there are signs, most of which will do you no good if you are lost. My favorites include “PFC Wilford Mothsend U.S.M.C.” like that’s going to help you any. Or another 35 miles inside the Georgia border telling you this is the “CSA Tennessee Memorial Highway”. Now that’s really what you’re going to need some winter morning at 2:00 AM with your gas needle on empty.


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