One year ago today: April 2, 2022,revert to camel dung.
Five years ago today: April 2, 2018, Brandon, the town, not the idiot.
Nine years ago today: April 2, 2014, It ends on Lesson One.
Random years ago today: April 2, 2007, half of Tombstone.
As Trump might say, this was the perfect trip. Here’s the old-fashioned trip format, with some photos of Hidden Valley. I think that’s the name, though on a map it’s got one of those screwball Indian-feather names that all sound alike. Saskatoochawachee. It turned into a fantastic spring day and I stopped regularly, otherwise I believe I would have made this trip in record time.
8:00AM On the button, leaving Hermitage, taking the non-shortcut via Center Hill Lake into Smithville. The name is because the other route via Cookeville looks shorter, but it’s a mile longer. Gas is $3.39, up 30¢ since Friday. We are 748 miles from the cabin.
9:00AM Set a Tennessee record 70.1 miles in the first hour, zero millennials on the road. The recording says only Boomers who had highway savvy and courtesy. They traveled near the speed limit, moved over when you wanted to pass, never got lane-defensive, didn’t drive in your blind spot, and let you keep your cruise control on 80 mph. I used Hwy 70, as there is no good connection between McMinnville and Hwy 111.
10:00AM Absolutely beautiful day, we are in the Appalachian foothills, it has dropped to 63°F and I’m driving with the window down. It’s that long 45-55 speed zone around “Spencer” the non-town whose primary income is from speed traps. It’s 118 miles into the trip, only 58 miles this hour. But far nicer than the Murfreesboro “Millennial Trail”. Passing maybe 20 cars per hour. I’m driving the KIA, where if you leave the setting with the headlights on, it dims the dash lights so you cannot read them in daylight wearing sunglasses.
11:30AM I reset the clock to reflect actually driving time because of the stop at Hidden Valley. I’ll see if I can get you a vista of the panorama. It’s a 65 mile long river valley. We drove half-way up, as far as Pikeville, last trip. This appears to be a photo of the tourist sign, but if you look closely at the safety chain, you’ll see padlocks. Over the years, it seems, people have attached these and one day I will remember to add one for posterity.
Needing to mail a letter, I finally found “downtown” Soddy-Daisy, post office and all. They have several buildings including a “wrestling arena”. About what you’d expect. We are now descending the east side of the mountains toward a sunny day in Georgia.
12:30PM Taking the Hixson bypass, the Sunday traffic has picked up. It’s slow enough now to drive with the window down. I pulled into the rest stop just past the Georgia border, strange how they don’t label these places by the exit number. I’m listening to a not-so-great audio book called “All The Colors Of Night”. Most audio-books are murder mysteries. My recording describes the traffic as “about half”.
1:30PM Got through Atlanta at 55 mph, but that is a fluke. The jam started 12 miles south of the city in the other lane. This eventually stretched back some 30 miles. This is considered normal for that part of the world. Chinese-grade traffic jams. It’s kind of proof that the economy of Atlanta is based on welfare. Nobody could reliably commute in that royal mess.
2:30PM Taking it easy, the warmer weather is easier on my constitution, which I admit is not the newest. I’m 350 miles along, nearing Macon, the traditional half-way mark. Georgia to me typifies the emerging “millennial state” where all the garbage they created starts getting dumped back on them. I have an example, watching because I thought a fight would break out. Imagine the gas pumps where the lanes face the store entrance. Some bozo designed the pumps in islands of two, so one pump is a few steps closer to the door. A Boomer would pull up to the front pump, since he is likely to leave first. The lazy millennial parks nearest the door.
The problem is, it blocks the other pump—and millennials love to leave their cars parked in the way while they casually stroll the aisles. You know, in the off-chance they spot something they want to put on their 0 APR cash-back credit card. Well, this guy in a ladder truck pulled around and backed in to the front pump and starts filling a 120 gallon tank. And we know how long that can take in this wimp-coddling OSHA freak-world.
Our millennial man-bun returns, latte in hand, and it seems he doesn’t identify with reverse gear. He feels entitled to pull forward and tells the truck driver he has to move. Don’t want to be late for the drum circle. The truck driver, aware that texting is sacred to XYZers, hauls out his smart phone and begins a leisurely fake chat session. You are not going to believe what I tell you next.
The millie-wimp finally stands behind his car and starts directing somebody else to back out. The damn millennial doesn’t know how to drive in reverse! I could not see directly, but when the car is stops, the millennial walks to the car door and out steps a nine-year-old boy barely this tall. The dismal bastard got his kid to back the car out. These are America’s final generation, folks, unless we play cowboys and woketards.
Brit canned food.
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3:30PM Passing Forsyth, GA. The Wizard, tattoo parlor now open. Sixth hour of driving time. Here is (from earlier) some extremely rare footage of the path through Central Hill with no traffic on the road. Okay, I cheated a bit, but there is no denying the road was all mine for the start of this trip. It’s also my spring vacation, a modification of my original plan to be touring Europe at my age. I mistakenly though Europe would always be there
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Not included here, I took footage of the valley near Dunlap. It more than impressed me how Playfair, the Scottish geologist, put it all together while others who gazed at such formations for centuries never clued in. I don’t know much beyond my narrow studies, but I know the bottom of a lakebed when it appears half-way up a mountain.
4:30PM South of Macon, in the Bible Zone. The only radio stations available will captivate anyone with a 100-word vocabulary. I put the audio-book back on, disk 3 of 8. By now, it has resolved to just another ordinary plot but with gems (ha-ha) like a crystal hand grenade, a pair of aura sunglasses, and guys who are unaware of just how constantly women think about sex. I had to double-check that yahoo was not from my home town.
People in books don’t die from head blows. They just get knocked out and amnesia. I bought a package of sugared pecans. They were also fiery hot spicy, which I did not notice right away.
5:30PM Road work ahead, expect delays. Six lane road, but Georgia does not like to work on one or two at a time. Overcast, 76°F and nearing the Florida border.
6:30PM Still easy going, 200 miles left to go. With luck we got two hours of sunlight. NPR came on, some big deal about the Israelis setting up a fake charity in the USA to channel funds to get around the foreign agency reporting act. The Israelis got caught trying to coerce people into not boycotting companies that build on the West Bank. Hmmm, now you will be told what to boycott or else. When near Lake City, I listen to 106.1FM, “The Talker”. It’s a Democrat who has become disillusioned with the direction the party has taken and exposes a lot of crap on them. The callers prove there are some pretty sick people out there.
7:30PM Now overcast and getting dark.. Only the last hour in the dark with fading NPR. You have to be one truly sick bastard to support the Democrats. The party of death, arson, rape, riots, theft, corruption, and perversion. I suspect most of the people who want change are the losers who never fit into regular society. That’s quite different than being anarchist by itself. Ah, there’s the sign to Webster. We’re an hour from home.
8:30PM Here we are. The actual driving time was a bit less than 11 hours, so that’s a record likely to stand. Traffic most of the way was maybe 1/20th of usual. It’s now cloudy but warm. I drove the last while with the windows down. This is not memory lane, but a holdover from just 12 years ago when I discovered having the windows down lowered my blood pressure. Most Americans don’t know they have a problem with blood pressure, I had no idea until almost too late. It was a great trip, one of the best—but I still prefer the over-nighters. Gasoline one-way was $122.44, but that includes arriving home with a half-tank still.
ADDENDUM
Expenses. I’ve been to Tennessee so often that I don’t really have to buy anything but consumables any more. That makes trips like this one pretty economical. At $434 not counting gasoline. (Gas was $235.18.) A few items get past on every trip but overall, we are $679 poorer than before. Without gas, that’s better than staying here. The pattern up there has changed to reflect my declining energy levels. Over half the money was entertainment, it’s $50 for dinner, which has a long story behind it. I do not know and won’t ask, but I think the Reb may go to dinner more often with me than all else combined since she moved to Tennessee. Don’t tell her I said that, and anyway I cannot be sure.
We did not go to any movies this time, she was in California mostly. I never liked recording studio work which too often means up until 2:00AM or 4:00AM. I’m an early riser. Between that, we did not even get time to record a few backing tracks I wanted for here. This is a clip from the bass line created for this ancient tune, no sound. This is a gig to illustrate part of the 30 hours required just to map out the bass line, giving this a contemporary sound. The trick is partially to give it a “beatz” feel without becoming a millennial tribal thump.
Part of the expense is a measurable chunk of pet food. It was originally budgeted as groceries, then, household, then entertainment, and back to groceries. Chicken, ground turkey, these doggies have it better than good. This, boys, is the way to a woman’s heart even if you don’t have to hold on to it any more.
