Small Towns

We have a new Wal-Mart in Bowling Green. The little one in Louisiana is now closed. The first picture is of the parking shed for - believe it or not - horse and buggies!!!!!! We have a lot of Amish in the area, so Wal-Mart is very accommodating. They want

equal opportunity spending. The second pic is of a boat that is from St. Paul MN. All the way in that little thing to Missouri. John didn't see the owner, so we don't know if he is coming or going.

You Might Be A Redneck...

We went to Washington State last week. My first time. I can mark two more states off my list of places I have never been. (We drove through Oregon).

You might be a redneck if you spend the weekend at
The Yakima County Jail or
The Yakima Speedway (which is across the street from the jail) or
Gear Jammer Truck Stop, Yakima, WA (which is a couple blocks from the other two)

No offense to rednecks. I have my own redneck ways.

Our first delivery was to the jail. They had no dock or forklift. John had to hand-carry each box to the tail of the trailer, where there were about 10 inmates stacking the boxes onto pallets. The inmates were not allowed on the trailer. The boss of the kitchen did climb up and help, so there wasn't room for me (darn the bad luck). One of the inmates said "I used to do this for a living." I thought to myself, we still are doing this for a living.

Anyway, Seattle was interesting. Raining the whole time we were there. It started about 50 miles out of town, and didn't stop until we were about 50 miles out the next day. Major coffee lovers. There were little coffee drive-up shacks everywhere. One was called "Brew-lesque" where the coffee was served by pretty young girls in sexy underwear. Lots of "gentlemen" in line at that one.

I was really scared my first driving experience of snow driving was going to be through the mountains of Oregon, but we were VERY lucky and didn't see any snow. I would be quite happy to not go anywhere Idaho, Oregon, or Washington until at least May of next year!

Stinky Yuck

Tomorrow we are going to a pork processing plant in Illinois. At the entrance, there will be trucks coming in with live pigs. We will be there to pick them up when they are no longer alive. Of course, it smells. And we sometimes have blood running out the back of the truck. That's how "fresh" the meat is. We will be taking it to the Chicago area to a sausage processing plant. I would rather not know about all this. I would rather just go to the store and buy sausage and not see what eating sausage really means. Poor little things!

Dark Room(s)

While visiting Jes, we got to go to the Art Dept and she showed me the dark rooms. I felt smarter just being there. It looked like a real work place, not frills, well used.

California Coastline

More pics of CA (since we spend so much time there). This is between LA and Santa Barbara. We are going to Washington State tomorrow. Yakima, WA. I guess you pronounce it the way it is spelled, at least our dispatcher did. Our first delivery is to the Yakima County Jail. Should be interesting. I hope they let us both in and don't make one of us wait outside! Guess which one of us that would be. Hint: not John.

James Dean

Coming home from Salinas, CA, we have to travel east on CA46 and CA41. This is a 2 lane highway between the 101 freeway and Interstate 5. We pass through an intersection called "James Dean Memorial Junction". I looked it up on Wikipedia, and this is where he died on Sept 30, 1955. He was driving a Porsche 550 Spyder nicknamed "Little Bastard", on his way to a race in Salinas. He was hit head-on by a 23 year old Cal Poly student at this intersection. There are rumors that the car is cursed. Alec Guiness warned James that he would be found dead in that car within a week. That was 7 days before James' death. Read the article on Wikipedia. It is fascinating.