One year ago today: December 22, 20192018, $388.55 over budget.
Five years ago today: December 22, 2014, no building your own!
Nine years ago today: December 22, 2010, but not one penny more.
Random years ago today: December 22, 2013, a 2010 anything.
6:19AM Rain. The shortest day of the year and I’m pulling a 12-hour drive. It is cold and raining and I get reports of the same in Tennessee. Climate change, my eye. My intention was to take the new route through Cookeville, but if this blasting rain freezes, I dunno. Because it is easy to find on the GPS, I call it the Soddy-Daisy route.
7:19AM Rain. The plan is Valdosta, Atlanta, Chatanooga, then north. Not much traffic on the road, I drove east, away from my destination, but no way I’m wasting the hour driving through Lakeland. It is pitch black. I breezed thought the Lakeland bottlneck and arrived in Dade City in one hour. Just before the turn, I hit a detour. Fatal accident, how sad this time of year. The road rejoined past the turnoff, so I carried on up Highway 98.
8:19AM Rain. II swear it is true. People in Florida wait at home until it is raining and dark. Then, they get in their cars and time it so they pass you at every intersection, narrow bridge, and sharp corner. And the first thing every goober who gets into this country finds out is that lights timed for 35mph are also timed for 70. The good news is the detour let me find the Old Dade City Highway. How did I miss that one by motorcycle?
9:19AM Rain. I turned off the breakers last night, which I do before traveling, but hit one too many. When I woke up this morning, I had no hot water. First thing in Tennessee, I shave and shower. Without GPS you would probably get lost in north central Florida. There are no decent east-west or north-south roads until you get all the way up to Gainesville. I am now in the forested part of northern Florida, which is pretty nice.
10:19AM Rain. Lake City, FL. I saw this complete idiot do the Florida pass at 75mph and cut in front of a semi-tractor. The truck had to hit the brakes and two tired blew up around 800 yards ahead of me.The blast threw a wave of water across the road, blinding the following cars. The smell of burnt rubber lingered in my car another five minutes. If he had hit that azzhole, I would not have stopped to help. I stopped in Valdosta for gas and a coffee. I’m 360 miles from Soddy-Daisy.
11:19AM Rain. Sycamore, GA, and averaging over 70mph, pouring rain and no decent radio stations. I put on an audio tape, “Show No Fear”, From the jacket, I was expecting a courtroom drama. This didn’t put me in a better mood after just getting caught in a lineup behind some slopeheads who took ten minutes to order. The tape has very little courtroom, but is more 1990s. On about the lady lawyer’s ex-husband, sick mother, druggy brother,, I’m on disk 4 and no real legal action yet.
The sign says 162 to Atlanta and 83 more miles to Macon, which is traditionally considered the half-way point of the trip by freeway. Not one clear patch of sky in 300 miles.
Cambodian dry forest.
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12:19PM Rain. I just passed Sycamore and hour back. According to the GPS, I’ve spent almost 300 hours driving to, from, and around Tennessee. That’s oout of a total of 1115 hours. Since I don’t leave the GPS on when I’m at home and use the scooter, that’s probably accurate. This car was never purchased for such long trips and it’s time to start shopping. Sorry for all the philosopy, but visibility is around a mile the entire trips so far. Gives me time to think, and I would love to have a job, just for two years.
I just past the first of two confusing intersections in Georgia. The ones where both arrows show the same destination or expect you to know a mite bit too much Georgia geography.
1:19 PM Rain. Caught in that shit-hole place Atlanta. I don’t know why they don’t just build a ramp up over city. It is 40 degrrees and traffic is 40 mph. I’m still 34 miles south of downtown and the traffic is already bunching up. I had an engine soon light winking, but it finally went off.
2:19PM Rain. South Atlanta. A Wal*Mart truck just cut me off, which reminded me to pull into Atlanta to check out the car. Sure thing, I needed transmission fluid. Did you know both by now that Wal*mart places what economists call complementary goods in different aisles and sometimes different ends of the store. So to get the fluid and some paper towels, I got plenty of exercise huffing around.
3:19PM Rain. Mercifully, the rain abated while I added the transmission fluid. It took an hour to check the car and get through Atlanta.
4:19PM Rain. Approaching Chatanooga. The traffic is building again and the radio is saying snow at higher elevations. That means the Soddy-Daisy route. Since I have no real heater in the car, I got no defroster either. Hey guys, it is a Florida car. I’m glad I’m not going the opposite direction, where it is bumper to bumper for some 56 miles so far. I’m staying on Highway 24, too much danger of snow.
5:19PM Rain, I’m still putting on miles with no decent radio. I listened to some Morse code, but everyone has a limit on that. I put on more of the audio disk, “Show No Fear”, If it wasn’t pouring rain, I’d get a different disk out of the back of the car but I’m not pulling over just for that. This story sucks. Except fo things like her attending the bar association dinner, there is zero lawyer or courtroom action and Im already on disk 4.
I’m 43 miles from my destination, so I’ve made excellent time. I will have driven 734 miles in 11 hours driving time. Again, because it is winter solstice, there is not that much sunlight. So I left and will arrive in the dark. It has been raining for 13 hours, you don’t get that in Florida even during hurricanes.
6:19PM Rain, but it let up on Briley Parkway, maybe seven miles from home. Did I just call Hermitage home? Um, figure of speech. I got inside and it was quiet, so I presumed the Reb was out walking the dogs. I made coffee and settled in to find out she had been upstairs all along. The dogs don’t bark at me, so we got a late start.
Welcome to Tennessee.
