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A Long Trip Up and A Long Trip Back
or Looking Forward To That Vim and Vigor by James Glaser July 5, 2010 
I like driving cross-country. The last two weeks took me to Northern Minnesota and back to North Florida. It was 3,800 miles round trip, and gas was cheap in Missouri at $2.29 a gallon and expensive in Wisconsin at $2.99. I noticed that cigarettes were $8.38 a pack in Wisconsin. Can you imagine being hooked on them and living there? You just know there has to be a black market for the heavy smokers. I like the back roads and small towns. While traveling North, I stopped in a small town on Father's Day and had a pork loin dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy, pickled beats, a salad, and coffee for $5.99. All those miles and I met only nice people, saw no accidents, and the skies were not cloudy all day. Really, I only had a few miles of rain and nothing hard. It must be clean living, huh? This Thursday I'll write more about the trip, but today I am still recovering from all the driving. Wanda flew up later and met me there in Minnesota. She and I drove back together, getting home late Friday afternoon, and let me tell you, Saturday I was a slug. Today, I did some mowing and picked some blackberries. I never have picked them before, and the vines that they are on are really thorny. I know tomorrow I'll be filled with vim and vigor, as my dad used to say. I can't wait. I can't believe it was two weeks without television news nor my daily fix on the computer. It is nice to know that I am not addicted. Of course when I got home and started watching and listening again, it was like I never missed anything. Nothing seemed to get better, and now we are on Day 76 of the oil spill. Yes, the media is still calling it a spill. Wanda and I are planning a trip to her home town, Pensacola. I think I'll have to keep her from the beach as she grew up fishing and swimming there with her family. You know it is going to be sad to see the oil on that white sand. Day 76 and this week they have 550 oil skimmers working on the clean-up. A couple of weeks ago they had only one hundred. I don't know why they don't have ten thousand skimmers working and a few hundred thousand people cleaning the beaches. We have something like 20 million Americans out of work. There is no labor shortage. Well, it is time to play some cards with Wanda and get ready for tomorrow. Remember, Vim and Vigor. A guy needs a good night's sleep if he is to wake up to that. |
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