I just completed a 600 mile drive from Bloomington, Indiana after visiting with my daughter at IU for her birthday.  Some thoughts on the ride home:

America is obese.  As a rule I pick a restaurant by looking at the patrons and thinking if I want to look like them in ten years.  That would eliminate just about every country breakfast stop including Cracker Barrel and the fast food joints that proliferate on the exits. I miss finding some local decent food. It is all corporate chains. I do tend to favor Waffle House when I am on the road, but I wish they would get some real butter instead of that Country Crock substance, and some real maple syrup even if they charged more for it.

Maybe because the men are too fat to see their own schmucks, they seem unable to hit the urinal. There is a reason we do not put these in our homes.  I can only guess that most of the highway lard asses just spray in the general direction to mark their territories before actually putting any of the urine in the urinal.  I have yet to see a bathroom without a trash receptacle so I do not understand why there is gum and cigarettes buttes in the urinal, except that they must feel entitled once they have marked their general area.

Most of us are sanipeds. That is a word I made up for people who use their feet to lift the toilet seat in a public restroom.  They should make toilet seats with a tab on the side to make it easier to lift the seat with your foot.

Self service gas pumps are a great idea. I am old enough to remember attendants.

Satellite radio is a godsend to road travel.  With satellite radio I actually prefer to drive 9-1/2 hours to Bloomington than to drive to the Atlanta airport, fly to Indianapolis, rent a car and then drive an hour to Bloomington. It maybe takes 2 or 3 hours longer to drive, but I have a comfortable seat and my own space (My wife, Debbie, joined me.) I can also haul stuff much easier and just throw it in my car.   I like to travel but flying is a miserable experience for me.

Channel 105 on Sirius is all Monty Python. A little Bloomberg, a blues station, then Classic Vinyl Rock station, the Eighties, Raw Dog Comedy and then …. whatever.  I even sought out liberal talk radio to get some balance in my life. The one I found was some woman from New York and was laced with profanity. Say what you want about conservative talk radio, it is far more civil.  The lefties seem as critical of the president as the righties do.

To the eighteen wheeler that cut me off and made me slam on my brakes.  Be more careful if you post that 1-800- HOW AM I DRIVING phone number on your truck. We all have cell phones and my wife had one of those portable pocket movie cameras. I called and reported you, reading all the data on the truck to the attendant.  The worst 18 wheelers are the ones on I-75 South from Chattanooga southward.  A fourth of them should be arrested.

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