Heading Out To The Highway

Heading Out To The Highway            2484    

Tuesday, December 6, 2005-1:23 A.M.

Good evening, or good morning, depending on how you look at it....I always call it night until 6:00 A.M.  If you got drunk in a bar, met someone, took them home and slept with them, you wouldn't say "You'll never believe what happened to me Tuesday morning."  If the Seahawks/Eagles game had gone into overtime, they wouldn't have called it "Tuesday Morning Football."  That's my policy, like it or not.

So I'm home from Johnson City, Tennessee, and it took me exactly 11 hours.  I said it would take between 10 and 12, and damn if I didn't nail it right on the head.  I wound up only getting about 4 hours of sleep the night before the drive, so I left right as the sun was rising, and got home a little after sunset.  I needed as much daylight as possible to prevent night blindness and hallucinations and that sort of thing.  I tend to see the same visions while driving at night as I would after drinking standing stump water.  *Not* safe.

So while I was driving home, under the influence of caffeine beverages and rock 'n' roll (the Man cannot keep you down if you ROCK), I had to take notes to preserve my random thoughts that I felt needed to be passed along.

First note.  I traveled home via Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and then into Upstate New York.  I covered 5 states in 11 hours, and at one point, I went through two tunnels, the Big Walker Mountain Tunnel and the East River Mountain Tunnel.  While going through the Big Walker Tunnel, I was following a horse trailer while listening to the second solo album of Adrian Belew (former guitar player from King Crimson).  I will wager a year's pay that I'm the first human being in recorded history to perform that feat, and will probably be the last.  If you do it, I'd like to hear from you...maybe we can start a club or something.

Second note.  I traveled past a sign notifying me that I was entering Hungry Mother State Park.  I was intrigued to the point of distraction, and will be googling the name of the park to try and find the origin of it's nomenclature.  I'm sure there's a good story.

Third note.  I've been chewing a lot of peppermint gum lately.  The reason being that peppermint keeps you awake; it's an aromatherapy trick I learned.  Rather than drinking a lot of coffee or caffeine beverages which go through me faster than I actually drink them, I can chew gum and stay alert on my long drives.  So when the gum gets old, and loses it's flavor, I spit it out.  I don't mind; it's just gum, and will melt away on the road and go back into the Earth from whence it came.  And I noticed that when you spit gum out at 80 miles per hour, it bounces.  And high!  Higher than you'd think!  It's like a little game for me now, spitting my gum out and looking in my rearview mirror to see a little white gumball flying off the pavement.  And that's crucial, too...you have to roll the gum into a ball, or it won't bounch.  Don't just spit it out when it looks like a dentist's mold.

Fourth note.  I spend a lot of time hypnotized.  While I'm driving, I always have music going, and I find that the music I choseto listen to is the kind that makes for good hypnotism background.  It's often very long songs with instrumentals that allow me to "float away."  I estimate that in a 10-hour drive, I spend about 7 hours of that in a semi-conscious state.  I'm fully aware of what I'm doing, navigating the vehicle, avoiding other cars and road obstacles, but it's very mechanical, and hours later, I'd be hard pressed to give you details of what obstacles I eluded or even details of the cars I passed.  It's actually better that way, I suppose...the dreadful boredom would probably kill me otherwise.

Note five.  I looked down at my odometer at one point in West Virginia, and the number was 282828.  I won't see that combination again unless my car magically lasts for a million more miles.  I'm not betting on it.

Note six.  I spoke at length with one of the bartenders at the Comedy Zone in Johnson City, Tennessee, and one of the facts that he spouted out about his home state stuck in my head...the state ranks near the top of the country when it comes to road conditions and repair, and near the bottom of the country when it comes to education.  So by inference, if you are a parent in Tennnessee, when you put your kid on a school bus, you're sending him to a terrible education, but it's a smooth ride getting there.

Note seven.After the second show, a couple of guys were talking football with me, and they asked me the question I hate to hear.  They knew I was from New York (state) and so they asked me "Jets or Giants?"  I angrily told them "Bills!" and the one guy, who was a Jets fan, told his buddy, "See, I told you so!"  I really don't understand why that would even be a question.  I know that the average folk that inhabit this country don't have the grasp of geography that I've been forced to acquire by actually driving through a good portion of the states, but if someone tells me they're from Oklahoma, I automatically know that there's a good chance they're a Dallas Cowboys fan, being the closest geographical home team for them.  Is it really that difficult to ascertain?

And this doesn't cover the yahoos that purposely choose a different "favorite" team from one that represents the community they live in or at least were raised in.  If you lived in Boston your whole life and moved to San Diego, I don't expect you to drop the Red Sox and all of a sudden start backing the Padres.  Although, it's cool if you do.  I strongly urge folks to back their home team...it just seems like the right thing to do.  If you're walking around Buffalo in a Miami Dolphins coat, aren't you just asking for trouble?  Why would you do that?  Let's pour gasoline on the fire while we're at it.  And if you're a Miami resident who now lives in Buffalo, what do you know about football anyway?  You're Cuban.

Good night, my friends.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY