Back to Work: Driving in Purgatory

Update: So I’ve been away for a while. What did I miss?

Turns out this work thing takes up a lot of time. Add that to the fact I’m old and the free time I do have at home takes the form of impromptu passing out in my chair for about 20 minutes. The length of nap time varies on what wakes me up. It could be anything from my snoring, to a kamikaze fly taking one for the team by diving into my mouth, or my assorted limbs going numb. Either way it’s usually a good signal that it may be time to take the long walk upstairs for bed. Now my real nighttime sleep is broken by one thing, and one thing only: the 4:30 alarm and my drive into purgatory.

Now before anyone gets an idea, I am not saying work is like purgatory. I’m not in any way saying that. No, work is phenomenal. I’m lucky to have such a job. The people are great and I’ve made some fast friends. I work in a modern building with serious comforts. And they pay me real American money, so I got that going for me. It’s the drive for which I lament. The 20 minute sled dog race with some of Knoxville’s finest motor vehicle operators that makes the 4:30am wake up such a joy.

As a christian/semi luke-warm catholic raised in the church and schooled by nuns, I believe in hell. As any bible believing christian should be able to tell you, hell is generally described as total and permanent separation from God. A darkness so consuming your soul cannot comprehend it and therefore suffers for eternity.

For my money that darkness could take many forms. When contemplating such things I always seem to come to the same scenario that depicts what my hell might look like.

Imagine if you will a two lane highway, straight as an arrow, unlimited speed, it’s and never ending. It’s lined by dense forests and sheer face walls of rock. In other words the only possible path of travel is on one of the two lanes. In my lane of course there is an old person, a grandma, frantically searching for the Shoney’s to hit the 4pm early bird dinner buffet before that bastard Fred from the fancy assisted living joint grabs up all the tater tots.

Her only line of sight, the 3 x 2 inch opening in the steering wheel. Her speed, a breakneck 35mph with one foot barely grazing the accelerator and one foot on the break shaking with the frequency uncommon in young healthy people. The effect of which is a perpetual blinking of her tail lights rivaling Chinese water torture and tapping out a Morse Code message over and over: You shall not pass!

If a rabid bear was charging you and your family at this very moment but you only had one bullet, you would have a hard time deciding to close out the bear or shoot her brakes lights out. And I’m stuck behind her.

But it’s a straight road with two lanes. A veritable eternal passing lane. There is no bear. So there is no problem, save one small detail; an equally eternal line of cars traveling in the opposite direction. They are all old people and they are bumper to bumper and oblivious to my plight, made clear to me by each driver thrusting their middle finger at me as they drive by. That ladies and gentlemen is my hell. My eternal separation from God, delivered by the angel of death: The Shoney’s Early Bird.

So with that as some context let me describe my drive to and from work. Of course it’s not nearly as bad as all that. Hence the title Driving in Purgatory. As most know purgatory is not as bad as hell. Just a tiny sample as you await salvation and passage to the sweet paradise. My Shangri La lies 20 minutes from home, the entry to the plant. Between me and thee is the purgatory of drives. At 5am you would think it would be clear sailing, but you, like I, would be wrong. The road is littered with cars at 5am. That fact alone hurts the mind in places to this point undiscovered.

And then more times than not a weary traveler decides the left lane, traditionally and legally known as the passing lane where thou shall not linger, is the very place they will linger. Even as cars going 20mph faster are whipping to the right to pass. Undaunted the left lane transgressor decides slowing down might be safer. Moving to the right lane never comes close to this egregiously bad driver’s frontal lobe. That’s just the drive to work.

Coming home is a new ball of wax. Two on ramps on the right side of the four lane highway causes otherwise rational drivers going the speed limit in the right lane to inexplicably move to the left lane and slow down. AND. SLOW. DOWN. WHY! Why are you slowing down? Why are you moving over? Maintain your speed, stay on the right and the on ramps will have no effect. Moving to the left and SLOWING DOWN only causes a traffic jam that builds and builds and lasts for a millennia.

All that angst you think would be the end of me. But then I remember I get to come home to this:

Heaven

And it turns out there is heaven on earth.

Diary of a SAHD: Power of the Cone

Sep29

Editors note: This is the fifth and final installment of a multi-part series on our summer road trip to NJ. They are not in sequential order. Some of this will be akin to eye wateringly boring home movies. Anyway, you’ve been warned.

As I said in an earlier post, we were riding free all the way back to Knoxville, Tennessee. Usually on a trip that long you’re gonna run into some type of traffic jam from an accident, toll booth pile ups, normally on I95 in Maryland, or a bunch of jerk-weed 18 wheelers running in the passing lane, something.

The consternation usually starts around the toll booths. There are no toll roads from Virginia into Knoxville. So once we navigate through the myriad of tolls in Jersey and through to Maryland it’s clear sailing. And on this particular trip we shot through toll booth alley with ease. So much so it worried us a little.

I mean, we would have to pay for that somewhere right? No way we scoot through there unscathed without hitting a major road block somewhere, a stop dead and get out of your car to stretch your legs in the middle of a six lane highway, type jam.

So now we are worried and paranoid. Every time the jack-leg in front of us, no matter who it was, hits the breaks I think, oh crap here it comes. We’ll be sitting here till doomsday. Whenever we saw the opposite lanes of traffic look suspiciously empty I thought, bet some chooch flipped his BMW and is blocking all lanes, probably going to stop dead any minute now.

Folks it’s a long 13 hour trip. The mind does what it does. Especially mine.

After about 7 hours down the highway, my mind was finally right, we are coming to a dead stop. Relief and anger. I can stop being paranoid. By the way, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean a 5 hour traffic jam isn’t about to happen.

Anyway, we are only stopped dead for about 10 minutes. Then we start the 2 mph creep. That lasts for about 2 miles. The tail gunner (Grammy), thinks she sees a merger ahead that might be causing the problem. She was right, sort of.

There was a merge going on but that was not causing the problem. This was:

Yeah – it’s a cone and it’s all alone.

A single solitary cone was sitting about 1 foot inside the white line on the side of the road. It was not blocking traffic, it was not causing anyone to go around it, it was just sitting there, doing what cones do. Which is to say, nothing.

Although, it was doing something, it was causing a lot of mouth-breathers to slow to a stop and stare at it. A phenomenon that will go unanswered till that great and terrible day.

It was also causing us to lose valuable time in the rush to get home.

A cone without it’s flagman, a traffic gnome without it’s fairy godmother, a ship without it’s captain, … dare I go on.

It reminded me of a scene from the movie Patton, where Patton’s armored column gets stuck on a bridge in Italy because a local can’t get his mules to move off the road. In the meantime two German fighter planes are strafing the armored column and men are dying. Patton rushes to the front of the column where the mules are, almost has an aneurysm when he finds out what’s going on, draws his pearl handled pistols and blows the brains out of the two mules. Problem solved.

I mean we weren’t being shot at by Germans or anything, but we were making good time and all of a sudden we weren’t. And if it’s one thing dudes hate, it’s not making good time when driving a long way. I’m not sure you can quantify the pressure of getting home even ten minutes faster than you thought. Somehow it makes the whole 15 hour trip seem not as bad.

Don’t even try to do the math, you might tear the space time continuum.

All I’m saying is, good thing for the cone my pearl handled pistols were packed in my golf bag.

Diary of a SAHD: Toll Booths, Traffic Jams and Torrential Rain

Sep21

Editors note: This is the third installment of a multi-part series on our summer road trip to NJ. They are not in sequential order. Some of this will be akin to eye wateringly boring home movies. Anyway, you’ve been warned.

Here is a long one for a rainy Saturday in Knoxville.

Well we have come to the actual trip of the road trip. I’ve avoided these next few posts for some reason. Might be all the emotional scars that develop when spending 26+ hours in the Starship Frankerprise with this cast of characters:

The navigator. Sort of.

The hoarder

The sleeper cell.

The tail gunner. AKA Grammy.

It really wasn’t as bad as I’m about to make it sound. At least that’s what my therapist says. And if you haven’t guessed, I was not authorized to use what was deemed an unflattering car picture of the Navigator, also known as Mrs. Frank’s Place. I mean let’s just be honest here, I’m retired, she pays the bills up in this joint. So, hello great looking beach shot. We at Frank’s Place aim to please.

Anyway, that’s the crew I hit the road with. To Jersey and back or bust…or something like that.

Except for stopping 1.5 hours into the trip for a potty break at the Virginia welcome center, a scant 12 hours from Jersey, we were rolling. Ahh the Virginia welcome center, where I used the ladies room without knowing it, with my mother-in-law in the next stall.

Good times.

The sequester must have hit Va. hard because they apparently can’t even find budget money to label the bathroom doors properly. No matter. The only other issue on the trip to New Jersey was having to stay overnight about 2 hours from the promise land. Go two posts back and read Night of the Alligator for a more in depth look at our night in Maryland.

No, it was the ride back to Knoxville that was fraught with adventure.

It started out so well. Did I mention it was Labor Day weekend?

Cargo hold of the SS Frankerprise

Had the cargo hold of the Frankerprise all loaded and secured for the voyage. Besides the people there are a few items missing, but for the most part that is the bulk of our “stuff”. Peep that picture folks. That’s some grade-A arranging. Even had a center aisle all the way to the front for easy movement about the cabin. There are some churches in town that don’t have a center aisle that nice.

Ok stop looking. We hit the road at 7:30 in the am. Perfect time if you’re planning to make the whole 660 miles in one shot.

We got out of Jersey as fast as I think we ever have. On Saturday of Labor Day weekend at the shore that’s huge. Everyone is settled in and I’m thinking this might go smoothly. I’m a dreamer of dreams, sue me.

The dream didn’t turn to a nightmare until we hit I-81 in the northern part of Virginia. The little McDonald’s has the dubious distinction of being a great stop and a very bad stop all in one.

It was a great stop because it was our first stop, almost 5hrs into the trip back to Rocky Top. At this point I have no doubt we will be in our own beds that night.

It was also great because in the parking lot of the McDonald’s stood Eli, a guy who was probably in his mid fifties but looked like he was 750 years old. Eli apparently was having a dispute with his wife or his brother. Maybe his brother’s wife. His vocabulary choices didn’t allow me to narrow it down any further. Eli was not a student of discretion because he was speaking at the top of what was left of his Marlboro smoke-filled lungs, or lung maybe. It was pretty awesome. I love listening to southerners use the F-bomb. A good Yankee will conjugate the F-bomb into every possible form and fit it all in one sentence; Johnny Reb, not so much. But oh how I love to listen to them try. Made my morning.

It was an incredibly bad stop because the Navigator had dialed up that particular establishment on the inter-webs and it was billed as having a playground. It didn’t of course. It did have a great big field next to it where Sleeper Cell and the Hoarder could run around and stay clear of Eli as he brought down all the saints (ask a Yankee).

After the Navigator recovers from her thinly veiled invective filled rant about what lying turds McDonald’s is, we do a manual waste dump, off load some ballast, (you’re welcome McDonald’s with no playground), and get back on the road.

In a flash we’re lost.

The exit to get back on I-81 had magically vanished. Signs pointed to it but it wasn’t there. This is what I was getting from the Navigator:

No clue bro.

Both me and the Tail Gunner are in agreement that the exit was there but now was not. Remnants of some construction became visible on our 2nd pass. The Navigator spots a makeshift, and I do mean makeshift, sign pointing to the possibility of a new on-ramp to 81. Had I not been conjugating F-bombs I would have taken a picture of it.

So after that ten minutes of trail blazing we were off and running below the Mason Dixon.

We hit Roanoke and now we are 4 maybe 4.5 hours from Knoxville. Yes I was bending a few laws. But in Roanoke we hit a wall of water. It was Ten Commandments, parting the Red Sea wall of water. Now my eyesight is ok at best. It’s almost non-existent in the dark when it’s raining. It wasn’t dark yet, but it wasn’t sunny either, and unlike Knoxville these folks on 81 don’t slow down just because there’s a measly inch or two of water on the road.

So we’re hurtling down the highways at about 75 mph in what is now a book of Revelation type downpour. I’m lookin for the Four Horsemen, now on jet skis, to come up behind me at any moment. But it’s an interstate right, should drive through it any minute, right. Yes true enough, if any minute means 3 hours later, than yes we drove through it.

We bust out into sunshine in Bristol. We will make it home. Dinner at the Chick Fil-A, with a playground, was uneventful and we’re back in the Frankerprise making warp speed to Knoxvegas. And we’re back in the rain. Not Armageddon type but still some serious rain. And Sleeper Cell decides now is the perfect time for an attack.

For whatever reason she is out of her mind, bat-crap crazy. Tail gunner is practically standing on her head while singing to keep the kid entertained. We are but 90 minutes from home. I am not stopping. In the entire van from front to back, packed with metric tons of stuff, the only thing that will keep Sleeper Cell happy is my wallet. She played with that thing for 40 minutes. I was still finding things like credit cards, my Kroger card etc.. on the lawn the next morning. That is clearly a look into the future when she becomes a teen-ager.

The rain tapers off as we near Knoxville and the Navigator brings up a very important point in the form of a question. She’s the Alex Trebek of navigators. What is “Are we going to hit game traffic?”

Well crap, it’s opening day of college football and the Vols had a home game that might let out as we pass through downtown. I’m now dropping F-bombs in my head faster than might be humanly possible. Took every bit of Jedi mind power to keep them in my head and not release them into the pressurized atmosphere of the Frankerprise.

Navigator dials up the game on the radio and it appears the game will not let out for several minutes after we pass by. Bullet dodged, because that stadium holds about 105,000 people. Probably only 98,000 at the game, but either way I-40 in Knoxville literally becomes a parking lot for an hour or so after the game is done.

But we missed it and it then occurred to me we hit not one traffic jam the whole way from Jersey to Knoxville. No accidents, no jams at the myriad of toll booths you have to go through to leave the northern part of the country, nothing. Well there was one small incident involving a traffic cone at the merger between 70 and 81. Look for that in a post called The Power of the Cone.

But all in all it was a smooth trip as far as the stopping and going went.

As for all the rain, well lets just say this is what I looked like when we started out for home…