Mile 1,796 - random musings and thoughts

Saint Louis is a lot smaller than I expected - I guess my perception of city size is a little warped as I've lived in three major city areas in my life - Berkeley / Bay Area, Washington D.C., and New York, so I need to adjust my city perception sizing for the rest of the country.

I took a nice few pictures of crossing the Mississippi and of Saint Louis, but unfortunately, as you know how you always forget one thing when you're packing up - and for me, that was the usb cord for the camera to the laptop. So, if you like, you can google up a picture of the bridge on W-64 and the St. Louis arches, then you'll see what I have in my camera!

After a few hundred miles your thoughts start running amok (without the music from Wicked, or books on tape [a couple of suggestions from peeps that forgot that I was Deaf ... grin]), and these are just a few thoughts that came up over the course of my driving thus far.

-cruise control - this is the first trip that I have been able to use cruise control for about 80 percent of the trip! Traffic isn't as bad in comparison to the East, so that is really nice. Plus, it's also probably the reason I have not gotten a speeding ticket yet!

-speaking of speeding tickets - is Wednesday a national speeding busting day? When I was driving from MD through WVA, and for part of KY, altogether about nine hours of driving, I saw no less than ten police cars parked ready to bust people (which means there's like another ten hidden - similar principle with cockroaches - you see one, there's a a few dozen others hidden), and I actually saw a car trying to pass me getting pulled over, and then yesterday, I saw zero, count 'em, zero police cars.

-throughout Indiana / Illinois, there's a speed limit of 70 or 65 (depending on state and areas) for cars, and then 55 for trucks / trailers / campers. I understood that when I was going across the Appalachian Mountains, as the inclines are pretty steep and it'd be safer for truckers to go slower, but in the states where there's almost no hills? Where is the logic in that? Anyone know?

-Road Ends signs. These signs gives me the giggles. I saw a few of these sign at the very end of the road. I mean, literally the pavement ends, and then there's nothing but grass and trees. I was thinking it would be prudent to provide a bit of a warning in when the road ends, not at the very end of the pavement.

-road kill. Blech. In the East, I have the blessing of not seeing so many dead animals on the road. Over the last 1K or so miles I must have averaged three dead animals per hour. Echk. I could identify some of 'em, but for the most part the poor little things are beyond recognition.

-advertisements. Crazy ass - there is so many advertisements / the boards on the highways - and there was one that I could not figure out. This ad is a "joint ad" of Absolut Vodka and Michelob beer, encouraging you to have an Absolut drink before dinner and then Michelob beer for dinner. Huh? That's quite an unlikely marriage! I mean, a nice Absolut martini for before the dinner, and then you'll go huh, a Michelob? It's not that much better than Budweiser, so I'm just befuddled by the ad execs, and wonder what they were thinking when they made that board.

-Bushwick Brooklyn! was written on my car hood (apparently the car was a little more dusty than I thought it was), and it has survived several rain storms (and quite observant of me, I finally noticed that when I pulled in the motel in the middle of KY), and now I'm wondering how many rain storms will my car need before that finally washes off. Any bets?

-time zones. I'm used to flying across the country and landing, then knowing exactly what time it is as I've prepped for it. Last night and this morning I was thrown off by the change of one hour in the time zones, and then I realized that there were a time zone change when I crossed the middle of Kentucky. So, you can be sure I'll be more careful to focus on when the next time zone change occurs!

Let's see what the next thousand miles brings us!