One year ago today: January 10, 2020, the big view.
Five years ago today: January 10, 2016, I hate older sisters.
Nine years ago today: January 10, 2012, 41 years in school.
Random years ago today: January 10, 2015, my horoscope lies.
That link above is a fact. At some point of the year, and I mean full credit courses, I have been in school during 41 years of my life. The last I attended full time was the year I turned 20. Since I worked full time until the day I retired, you can extrapolate the overall effort to drag into class after a whole day of work at a lumber mill or a door factory. And I still long to go back to school, I would do it tomorrow if I could. I tried to attend in Florida, but you know the story, they won’t let you unless you sign up for a degree. Scumbags.
Broward Community College was the worst, but in our millennialized age, it gets high ratings. This is the school where the “counselor” tried to scam me into a four year program (then around $50,000) when I arrived to sign up for an advertised $39 course on how to use a digital camera. Their criteria for determining admission is your credit score on the document they [fraudulently] present to you as “an enrollment application”. They took one look at my age and told me if I did not sign up for a computer degree, I was reneging on “my duty to God to help my grandchildren with their homework. You can’t make this shit up.
If you are reading this, I’m on the road. See the nice pic of the van in Pikeville, TN. It means I left Nashville around sunup and will likely not stop except for coffee until I’m more than half-way home and on the other side of the mountains. An emergency or a warm spell are the only thing getting me back here before spring. This round I survived from hot coffee and steamin grits, in plentiful supply because the Reb won’t touch either.
As ever, on the road ou get a different format. It’s scribed from recordings I make on the hour, in this instance I left at 8:27AM and drove the scenic route. It added 80 miles to the trip, but I saw a lot of eastern Tennessee. Took me long enough to get there, huh?
8:27AM Call my starting point Mt. Juliet. Eastbound on I-40, it is 31°F outsidde. Prestarting the Smithsonian from the house means I climbed into a nice warm car with heated seats. It’s the real maiden voyage, we s houd be on the road 8 hours. I have some MP3s but most of this tip coud be the radio, the last source of news not yet shut down by the new administration and their cronies. NPR always comes through. During the so-called protest violence instigated by paid Democrat operatives, somebody swiped Pelosi’s laptop. Oops.
Trafic is light, no snow, great sound system.
9:27AM I drove past my usual south turn on to a town called Crossville. Down to 26°F becausee I’m climbing into the mountains. There is snow on the ground, but not drifting, the grass is stilll poking through. These places are not affluent, but man, what scenery. It’s the old America you see in the movies. I could not find a spot for a morning coffee, so it’s good I had three cups already since 4:30AM.
10:27AM Dang GPS is trying to route me around the town, which I want to drive right through. You don’t even have to ask it. I took a nearest ramp onto a lengthy road called Main Street. The wind noise inside the van is notieably higher than a car. I’m stopping to do a walkaround. Crossville, nothing open, one bar that is plainly a converted garage (notice the mechanic’s bays. A surprising number of stone and log buildings.
The minivan is showing it’s lines as a luxury vehicle. Talk about comfortable. It has significantly more reserve power than the station wagon. I’ve already put it to good use. The road narrowed to two lanes and began descending into what we have learned is Hidden Valley. This is the northern entrance, emerging a Dunlap, one of my least favorite police stations in Florida, but not their fault.
11:27AM I turned off at a spot named Pikeville. Another survivor in an area full of newly formed ghost towns. If you see a pic of a rusty old truck, that’s proof I stopped for a look-see. Stretch my legs, the scenery is the same, so I noticed a side road to a town called Dayton, on twisty-windy Highway 30. Quite the uphill climb at 34°F noticing oncoming cars covered with snow.
The Caddie was never that comfy to crash in, just a couple inches less than needed to stretch out. One plus that GPS can’t do is reveal the population of the net big town, a huge indicator of services available. I stopped twice at gas pumps with the office [part] closed, credit card only.
12:27PM This is great, no franhcises. But the mom & pops ae closed Sundays. For the first time in decades, I did a power pass. To the camper doing 55 in a 70 zone, eat my dust. The heater is also great, recall the Taurus heater core was rotted out, a familiar problem when they never get used in Florida. I could not make it to Dayton on fumes, so I tanked up at some hick stop, the type who say, “Coffee? What’s that?”
Twenty minutes later, I pull into Athens, Tennessee. A bigger town with everything but I’d already stopped. I saw that new Burger King logo. It’s the title between to buns, what they are calling minimalist. The actual reason is that millennials, with their known reading skills, wre not interpretin the old logo as a food joint. It’s swirling design was being mistaken for things like laudnromats. This tells us it is really the millennial brain that is minimalist.
I’m still in Tennessee, Highway 411, a nice route but not a shortcut. A lot of speed zones keep you way behind what you planned. I’m tempted to stop for my siesta.
1:27PM Wow, I tuned into a talk show the Reb said was beyond bad. I point out she is not a liberal, but like myself, keeps running into them in the entertainment field. She’s more likely to given them a listen than myself, simply because I’ve heard all they have to say already. The callers were pathetic. When told the economy could now be shut down until 2022, they showed no alarm. Saying things like, “Joe will help me,” and “Biden will work things out."
I was not shocked so much because I was raised in just such a situation. Five siblings who would grab anything they could without any regard to consequences. I believe that is called killing the goose that layed the golden egg, but I’ve warned you before. Never use figures of speech around my family, you are wasting your time and they have a memorized retort for anything along those lines. Nope, i was not shocked. Just disgusted.
I stopped in a tiny spot called Chatworth, not to be confused with Chatsworth, which is in California. Coffee, a snack, and it is 48°F, even only halfway down out of the mountains. I listend to my VES, vehcile entertainment system. The millennials have fucked that up, too. When you stop the disk, it can’t remember the spot. It’s probably settable, but for f’sake’s that should be the default.
2:27PM I finally put on a disk I’ve already heard. I was unable to put up with the morons on the radio. Some people are stupid enough to think it is possible to tax corporations or any business that writes off its expenses. Duh, you half-tards, taxes are an expense. It is the end-user paying the tax. And, you pay the tax double when inflation rolls around. I rolled down the window and slowed down. I would strongly advise anybody who thinks they can vote themselves something for free do the same.
I finished the disk, so went back to AM, the only stations available this far from town. The scenery is great as long as you consider trees with no leaves and a lot of rocks to be scenery. I’m okay with it. I’ve passed a dozen towns closed for the Sunday. Where this fits in is i grew up in a rural area where most of the towns were established back when farming was the biggest occupation. But it is dependent on the mostly free back-breaking toil of the follow-on generations. I say from personal experience you can stick that concept
I finally got a radio station that categorized itself a community service It said old people are too trusting and polite to hang up on telemarket scammers. Fine, but if anybody in America o any age still needs such advice, they should probably seek counseling as well. At their own expense, I insist. I did pick up on the commericals, they were informative because they were geared down. I was unaware the average American experience 5 electric power outages per year . Another signal how third world weve become.
3:27PM Five power outages! The commerical was by a company selling emergency generators. Funny, there seems to be no shortage of firewood in these parts. When I thing about it, yep I’ve lost money because of lousy electric service. I drove south toware White, GA. I passed through Fairmont, which jolted my memory banks. These towns retain that rural personality even when the farms are gone or amalgamated. Fine examples of of classic US architecture, huge houses built when only the privileged could afford them. Now moldering away in distant shady mountain passes, sharing the Florida trait of no jobs that pay enough to buy them.
I got lucky through Atlanta again, one accident. I could have turned and went to Savannah, where I have not been in years. Just two hours more than my intended stop in Macon. I thought better of it, the sun was already low in the sky. I have that bad passenger side headlight. I easily talked myself out of that side trip, who knows what COVID crap they have? I’ll wait until I get back where it’s warm and I can investigate alternatives.
4:27 PM I carried on to Macon, a town I’m sort of getting to know. I-75 is a divided highway, the largest interior artery, is a divided highway. Not at intersections or ramps, but out on the open road, you have never seen so many head-on collisions. How do they manage that on a divided highway, you tell me. I’m averaging 25.4 mpg, not bad considering. It works out to a price per mile I could only have dreamed of affording when I was 20 and any of this woud have made a difference. Imagine, growing up just a six hour drive from Nashville, sigh.
I mentioned the temptation to stop for a siesta. Instead, I used the same time to tour the downtown of Macon. It’s spruced up better than it was, fewer vacant lots and bomb ruins along Cherry Street.
That’s today’s travel log, the part you won’t get from Lonely Planet or the Welcome Center. I’ll supply the facts and there was, in all of the time I was in Macon, exactly one good-looking woman. One. I stopped at the first club that had WiFi, which was also a video arcade. Yes, mostly males hand out there, but the follow on is usually females discover that pretty fast. Shall we say, there were women there, however until other clues than wholesome good looks emerged, usually behaviorally, gender was not as distinct as most of us usually expect; Shall we say, I mean.
ADDENDUM
I read the Tech section of Jimmy Ruska, which used to contain links to all kinds of real tech news. It’s gone downhill. Ruska is a bleeding-heart liberal, willing to spend your last dollar on his social programs. The list became increasingly politcized since Trump arrived. Today, I wanted information on liquid glass, claimed as new by DesignBoom despite plasma being a fact since 1897. The article was really nothing more than that strange fascination small minds have that glassblowing is some mystical art.
While there, I noticed that of the 29 topics listed, 23 concerned the banning of Parler by Big Tech. As part of their move to silence all information not far left, the ban is over a rule against anything that could “conceivably” result in violence. Big Tech (after carefully waiting until Biden was certified) has cut off most non-Democrat accounts. That includes Trump and his team. Big Tech just became more powerful than the US Presidnt, no good will come of this. What used to be a tech info list has just posted 70% content against free speech.
