After spending the past several weeks working on revisions to a book, I took the day off yesterday while super fantabulous friend Mary reads through the latest version with her red pen at the ready. It so happened that I’d been invited to the combined birthday party for my friend Kristy’s little boys, ages 4 and 7. So I loaded up my iPod with some Pottercast podcasts and off I went, driving the hubby’s truck (aka The Gas Hog) since there’s something wrong with my car and it won’t start.
The first hour of driving was normal interstate travel. The second hour took me along smaller back roads in Kentucky. I’m used to driving a Nissan Sentra, so driving the Dodge Ram is kind of like driving a large piece of farm machinery like a combine — of which I saw several. In fact, I had to hug the side of the road as I met two combines on the road. Another was in a field I passed, and it was raising the dust like crazy. We’ve been in a pretty severe drought with temps above 100 degrees for most of August, and everything is beyond dry and dusty.
On that note, I noticed a church sign on the way up that said, “Pray for rain.” I noticed the other side of this same sign on the way home, but that side said, “And you think it’s hot here?” 
Other observations from the road:
*In a small community called –I kid you not — Tiny Town, there’s a little store that has a really large, plastic Holstein cow out front. The cow is wearing sunglasses. Why, I have no idea. If I hadn’t forgotten my camera, I would have taken a picture for the blog.
*You can tell the instant you cross over into Kentucky even if there isn’t a sign. Suddenly, no one is wearing a motorcycle helmet because there’s no helmet law there. I cannot imagine riding a motorcycle without a helmet. It’s worse than riding in a car without a seatbelt. I used to work at a newspaper and had to cover wrecks where people weren’t wearing the suggested/required protective devices. Not pretty. And so many preventable injuries and deaths.
*Road shoulders are a good thing. You don’t miss them until they’re not there. Try driving a Dodge Ram and meeting a combine with no shoulder on your side of the road.
Leave a Reply