Still life with commuter
I'm poking along the Parkway to Baltimore, taking it easy on the gas pedal, because I don't want an ambulance ride today. It's slick and gray and drizzly, and speeding SUVs and sports cars whose drivers take no account of weather blow up roostertails of grimy mist. Still it's a nice ride, and I stand a chance of being only somewhat late for work, til the road widens for the interchange with Maryland Rt 100. There we stop, and it's a cornucopia of red brake lights snaking up and over the bridge. I'm in the middle lane, and drivers behind me are bailing for the exit, swooping past me on the right. I wait for a break and crank the wheel starboard and bolt for the exit, half-suspecting I'll get creamed.
But I don't get creamed, this time, and soon I'm on this cheesy freeway headed east. That's a problem, because I need to go west, and I was counting not on a cheesy freeway, but on a skeevy highway. There's a critical difference, which is that you can turn around on a skeevy highway. Not on a cheesy freeway. After several miles, I do see a turnaround in the median, and I take it, but it turns out to be one of those emergency-only things, and I feel like a complete ass for using it. Risking everyone's life so I don't have to wait for the next exit.
But I get turned around, and there is no crunch of metal, and a cop didn't see it so I didn't do it. Passing under the Parkway again, I see that traffic seems to be moving and wonder if I bailed prematurely. But surely if I had stayed there, traffic would not be moving.
I head toward Baltimore on Rt 1, which is a skeevy highway. Light industry, salvage yards. By now I'm pretty late for work, and so it would be nice to phone ahead and leave a voicemail saying, "hi, I'm late, which you already knew, because you're retrieving this after I already got there." But it will have been important to have phoned ahead, so I pull over at the Elkridge McDonald's. It's raining steady now, and I sprint across the parking lot in an awkward crablike sprangle designed to keep my weight over my feet so that they don't go shooting out from under me, which might send my face through the plate glass with the golden arches on it.
Five old men are hanging out inside, talking. One greets me and remarks I didn't get too wet, but I'm a lot younger than him. I say yeah, but I had to be careful not to skid out at the end there. Everyone agrees and says I don't want that.
The payphone is outside, where the rain is, so my fleetness of foot had availed me nothing. I stand in the rain to dial work. I leave my damp and discouraged message. Then I go inside and look at the menu and realize I literally haven't set foot in a McDonald's in several years. That's like not having a Coke in several years. OK, I haven't had a Coke in several years. It's not that I don't like hamburgers or sugar acid fizz water or consumerism. I just don't much like Coke or McDonald's. And the menu is astonishing. Some new thing called McGriddles, which I gather is a pancake-meat-egg-cheese thing you pour syrup on. I order an Egg McMuffin and a small coffee to go. $2.92.
Every McDonald's smells exactly the same and no other restaurant smells that way. I try not to think too hard about this.
But I don't get creamed, this time, and soon I'm on this cheesy freeway headed east. That's a problem, because I need to go west, and I was counting not on a cheesy freeway, but on a skeevy highway. There's a critical difference, which is that you can turn around on a skeevy highway. Not on a cheesy freeway. After several miles, I do see a turnaround in the median, and I take it, but it turns out to be one of those emergency-only things, and I feel like a complete ass for using it. Risking everyone's life so I don't have to wait for the next exit.
But I get turned around, and there is no crunch of metal, and a cop didn't see it so I didn't do it. Passing under the Parkway again, I see that traffic seems to be moving and wonder if I bailed prematurely. But surely if I had stayed there, traffic would not be moving.
I head toward Baltimore on Rt 1, which is a skeevy highway. Light industry, salvage yards. By now I'm pretty late for work, and so it would be nice to phone ahead and leave a voicemail saying, "hi, I'm late, which you already knew, because you're retrieving this after I already got there." But it will have been important to have phoned ahead, so I pull over at the Elkridge McDonald's. It's raining steady now, and I sprint across the parking lot in an awkward crablike sprangle designed to keep my weight over my feet so that they don't go shooting out from under me, which might send my face through the plate glass with the golden arches on it.
Five old men are hanging out inside, talking. One greets me and remarks I didn't get too wet, but I'm a lot younger than him. I say yeah, but I had to be careful not to skid out at the end there. Everyone agrees and says I don't want that.
The payphone is outside, where the rain is, so my fleetness of foot had availed me nothing. I stand in the rain to dial work. I leave my damp and discouraged message. Then I go inside and look at the menu and realize I literally haven't set foot in a McDonald's in several years. That's like not having a Coke in several years. OK, I haven't had a Coke in several years. It's not that I don't like hamburgers or sugar acid fizz water or consumerism. I just don't much like Coke or McDonald's. And the menu is astonishing. Some new thing called McGriddles, which I gather is a pancake-meat-egg-cheese thing you pour syrup on. I order an Egg McMuffin and a small coffee to go. $2.92.
Every McDonald's smells exactly the same and no other restaurant smells that way. I try not to think too hard about this.