Road Trip

There's really no trip or task so onerous that a good loud sing along with the Rolling Stones can't make it better. The Stones, ZZ Top, and Led Zepplin got me through the painting and helped me stay awake on the way home from the first of many, many conferences tonight.

Although I love the feeling of powerful vehicles under my control, I am not a long-distance driver. The interstate, depending on my mood, often brings out something feral and dangerous in me. I hate rudeness on the road. So few people will move over to allow cars to enter from the on ramps. Even fewer will move over when somebody has broken down or stopped on the side of the road. It's such a little thing, the movement of your hand less than a full inch to give safety. I don't know why people won't do it. Don't even get me started on those who block lanes, go fast and then slow, and tailgate.

Tonight was wonderfully free of idiots, though. Fighting my way through the traffic in the capitol city was not fun, especially since the DOT has decided to play "hide the exit" again. We have two major highways that split in the capitol city, and the DOT has been making getting on, off, or even staying on them into an increasingly daunting task for years. The system they started with was not good; it stacked up like crazy for rush hours. Their new system is in a state of constant flux with curving ramps that sometimes suddenly go nowhere. From trip to trip, your exit may have been completely revamped and moved across five lanes of traffic. It feels a lot like a child is playing with toy cars.

The best part of the evening was that I also got to spend time with my best friend. She lives over that way, so I was able to stop by after the conference. I don't get to see her nearly as much as I should, and sitting in her living room was a real treat. I stayed probably later than I should have seeing that we're all grownup and we have to get up so early these days, but I enjoyed it tremendously.

On the way home, I found a good rock station and happily sang my way home. It was a good trip, hopefully the first of many as I go back and forth to this conference. As long as I have my music, maybe the idiots won't get to me so much when they make their inevitable emergence from the calm streams of traffic.