Skip to main content

Road Trip

Just got back from South Carolina....3400 miles round trip in six days - with two dedicated to family stuff and sightseeing. I feel like standing up all day!

Got to drive through the Smokey Mountains, along I-40. On the way it stormed up a storm! Couldn't see past the end of the car's hood! Neat man! Neat! The Smokeys are beautiful and the fog just adds to the ambiance.

Time with family is of most importance, and we got two days to visit and enjoy each other. Met one son's girlfriend and got to harrass her for a while. She's a sport so she passed.

As good as the trip was, there were some issues that developed, and I'd like the states involved to fix these before my next road trip:

The interstate system was made to get lots of traffic from point A to point B quickly. The idea of a maximum speed of only 70 is pointless. My cars will easily do more than a hundred, and so let's look at boosting that speed limit some. Is there really any difference between the interstates or the traffic in say, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma? None. Zilch. Nada. So, it'd be nice if the two slow states could get with the program and at least meet New Mexico's and Arizona's speed limits.

What's the deal with Arkansas drivers that camp in the left lane? I thought only Louisiana drivers did that. Guys, if you have a line of cars behind you that stretches to the next state, MOVE OVER!

On a similar note, I'd like to propose a federal law that would require anyone in the left lane to be moving at least five miles an hour faster than the folks in the lane immediately to their right. Enough of these road blocks because "I'm going the speed limit" or "I have my car on cruise." Pretend like driving requires some actual mental activity and awareness of what's going on around you.

Thank you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Freewheeling

Merton never disappoints. Here's an excerpt from "Love and Living," a collection of individual writings collected after his death in 1968: "Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling; to do this one must recognize what is one's own—be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid." This short passage is pregnant with meaning and spiritual insight (would we expect anything less?). Let's start with the last few words: "…make that offering valid." The offering of ourselves, of our lives is our calling. We offer ourselves to assist the re-creation of Creation; the reconciling of Man to God. The validity of our offering is measured in how closely we mirror the work of God; to what extent our motivations are based on knowing who we are rather than a slavish obedience to p...
4 comments
Read more

Wineskins II

       In chapter 16 of Matthew, Peter ‘makes the great confession’ - Jesus he says is the Son of the Living God. At Covenant, when someone wants to become a member or to be baptized, we ask them who Jesus is and we expect this response. Peter is correct when he says this, but it is not clear that Peter (or the other disciples) understood the ramifications of his statement. Following Peter’s statement we find a series of incidents that make us wonder just how much Peters actually believed what he had said.      In the first instance, Jesus compares Peter to Satan. Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem and there he will die. Peter exclaims that he will not let that happen; Jesus will not be killed. Peter is expecting great things from Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God on behalf of Israel and he cannot fit Jesus dying into his hope for a greater Israel under this Messiah. This cannot happen, he reasons. Jesus’s response is a harsh re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where’s the Church Building?

This past Saturday morning was spent at the Children's Home in Albuquerque. The summer clean up was in preparation for the two week nigh annual open house and barbeque at the home. This day there were about sixty people from a local congregation helping weed, move rock, and generally spruce up the entire campus. Great folks all, and I'm sure they were a bit sore come Sunday morning. One of the people who came to help was a boy of about seven years who helped clear some of the larger weeds from a fallow section of the campus. As we worked on removing Russian Thistles, he said that tomorrow is church. Having sixty of his fellow church goers on campus, in turn assisting a Christian organization accomplish tasks too large for the staff to do by themselves, I observed that he was in church right now. Understandably, his retort was "where's the church building?" As I was readying a short instruction on "church" and community, someone yelled that it was time fo...
1 comment
Read more