This weekend we made a nice 370 mile loop to Granbury and back for Allison’s ten-year reunion. Some observations from the road…

Speed: Apparently the new car goes very fast. In the Jeep you could do 80, with a good tail wind and a hill, or by strapping rockets to the under-carriage and praying a whole lot. It was kind of a ‘break the glass, pull the emergency lever” kind of thing. Think Ludicrous speed in Spaceballs, but much slower (and no trail of plaid). In the Subbie we can cut forty minutes off trip and can pass the Jimbos in the dualie pickups with ease.

Diet Redbull: Tastes almost exactly regular Redbull – Utter crap but with the same twitchy/make-it-to-your-destination-alive affects. Drink the diet version because its better for you. No really.

Speaking of Jimbo: Yup, i met a guy named Jimbo. He works in leather goods. Of course. He also carries a four inch hunting knife with a mastodon ivory handle (“This shit was around before Jesus..”) and wears one of those cowboy hats that still have the cow fur on them.
Of course.

The New Graffiti: There were a total three different MySpace URLs on the bathroom wall of Skinny’s in Lampassas. I’ve always thought of bathroom wall graffiti as kind of a 60’s equivalent of the modern day internet bulletin board – complete with lurkers, regular contributors, and flame wars. That the patrons of the Skinny’s men’s room are starting to bring the two together is kind of odd.

Fourth Gear is Rad: It’s like in the old arcade version of pole- position where you had a turbo button. As opposed to stomping on the accelerator as we strategically crest a hill and thinking about all the reasons i don’t want to die in a head on collision, I calmly downshift and punch past people, Ricky Bobby style. Like I said, we shaved off 40 minutes.

Sports Guy: I listened to the weekly round of good vs evil (Aggies vs Mizzou). It’s always amazed me that you can walk up to guys you don’t know (say at your spouse’s high school reunion) and immediately conduct civil conversation based on the aforementioned game. College football, the ultimate networking tool.

Dear Cedar Park, you suck: There are 27 damn traffic lights on 183 going through Cedar Park.

A Diverse Cross-section of the Animal Kingdom: Apparently this particular section of US183/281 is like the Noah’s ark of Roadkill. That, or the new redneck game de-jour is explode-the-armadillo. Which is actually pretty plausible, and probably a recognized winter olympics sport. Anyway many a beast have met their end of late, on this stretch of road.

Also Regarding the Game: I hadn’t listened to the Texas Aggie Radio Network in a good long while, probably since graduation. I realized they don’t really subscribe to the theory of neutral media, almost on a scale that puts Fox news to shame. To hear them tell it, the Ags will not only be the national champions this year, but also put a monkey into space and reconcile quantum mechanics and string theory between practices.

As far as the reunion goes, I’m going to leave that one up to Allison, who has very nice post about it up on her site.