Sundries from the Road Trip
There were a couple of things from this road trip that didn't quite fit in a "normal" recounting, but that caught my attention or amused me.
One was something that happened as I was driving through El Paso on the freeway.
The road was about four or five lanes across in our direction and I was in the middle lane, I think, or the second-to-fastest. And suddenly I see ahead of me what looks like a tire rolling across the lanes of traffic. I hit my brakes to slow just enough to avoid it, and it continued off to the outside of the roadway. Fortunately nobody hit it, that I know of. I had quickly glanced in my rear-view mirror, and noticed a small gray sports care on the left shoulder of the freeway (fortunately wide enough for emergency stop), that seems to have been the source of the phenomenon. I don't know if it lost the wheel or not. But I swear, it looked as if the entire tread was intact (I'm assuming a steel belted radial), and that the sides of the tire had blown out, and it had just whizzed off the wheel, to roll across all the lanes of traffic like some bizarre rolling ring of tire. Also, fortunately, I didn't hear any sounds of crashing cars behind me, so I'm assuming the weird event concluded without injuries to anyone.
But the sight of that tire rolling away.... startling. Made me glad I had all new tires on Baby for this gallop across country.
The other sundry happened today as I was gassing up in Phoenix (which was unbelievably HOT at the time!). I was at a very newish, modern station, with pleasant music piped out to the pump area. But the pumps also had little speakers on them that launched into audio commercial chit chat once you started pumping. The speaker had a half circle of buttons around it, with offerings for bonus points on something, more information about whatever offering was being spoken of -- and blessedly, a mute button. I tapped that and the pump shut up. Okay, the canned advertisement stopped, but it amused me to think of it as a talking pump.
Which led to the thought of "I wonder what would happen if a customer did that and instead of muting, the pump then said 'What's the matter? Don't you LIKE me?'" And then, as is the way of writers, one thought led to another and a story began spinning itself. When I finished pumping the gas, I had to write down the story idea. It could be funny. But I have to decide on how to end it -- unrequited love? The problems of cross-species relationships? Should it be comedy or horror? Heh.
It was a momentary distraction from the fact that the temperature was 114.
One was something that happened as I was driving through El Paso on the freeway.
The road was about four or five lanes across in our direction and I was in the middle lane, I think, or the second-to-fastest. And suddenly I see ahead of me what looks like a tire rolling across the lanes of traffic. I hit my brakes to slow just enough to avoid it, and it continued off to the outside of the roadway. Fortunately nobody hit it, that I know of. I had quickly glanced in my rear-view mirror, and noticed a small gray sports care on the left shoulder of the freeway (fortunately wide enough for emergency stop), that seems to have been the source of the phenomenon. I don't know if it lost the wheel or not. But I swear, it looked as if the entire tread was intact (I'm assuming a steel belted radial), and that the sides of the tire had blown out, and it had just whizzed off the wheel, to roll across all the lanes of traffic like some bizarre rolling ring of tire. Also, fortunately, I didn't hear any sounds of crashing cars behind me, so I'm assuming the weird event concluded without injuries to anyone.
But the sight of that tire rolling away.... startling. Made me glad I had all new tires on Baby for this gallop across country.
The other sundry happened today as I was gassing up in Phoenix (which was unbelievably HOT at the time!). I was at a very newish, modern station, with pleasant music piped out to the pump area. But the pumps also had little speakers on them that launched into audio commercial chit chat once you started pumping. The speaker had a half circle of buttons around it, with offerings for bonus points on something, more information about whatever offering was being spoken of -- and blessedly, a mute button. I tapped that and the pump shut up. Okay, the canned advertisement stopped, but it amused me to think of it as a talking pump.
Which led to the thought of "I wonder what would happen if a customer did that and instead of muting, the pump then said 'What's the matter? Don't you LIKE me?'" And then, as is the way of writers, one thought led to another and a story began spinning itself. When I finished pumping the gas, I had to write down the story idea. It could be funny. But I have to decide on how to end it -- unrequited love? The problems of cross-species relationships? Should it be comedy or horror? Heh.
It was a momentary distraction from the fact that the temperature was 114.