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I am away for a little while working on a few or more episodes for The Adventures of My Space Alien Alter Ego story ... will return (to Earth) soon!

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esbb

2014-04-10

Three For The Road

For part of today there was a strange brief three minute period on Interstate 40 for three things I had never observed before.

I was driving the speed limit going west in eastern Amarillo but still managed to slowly pass a small demi-dented damaged car in the middle lane. It had no rear glass yet there were several things piled across the flat area behind the headrest where the window would have could have should have been. They looked like possibly groceries, the one closest to me looked like a bag of potato chips defying the laws of physics and aerodynamics.

I thought that might be the wildest thing I saw all day.

Nope.

A little ways farther down the road on the north side was a billboard in a foreign language but not Spanish, and I laughed and thought, "Dang! I must have taken the wrong exit and took the road to Da Nang!" - I am not fluent in Vietnamese but I can pick out a few words on a menu, but not eXpecting to see a Vietnamese billboard. I will have to check how many Vietnamese live in Amarillo. [Answer: 3.1 percent Asian, so roughly 6 thousand would be about the maximum for 2010 census data.]

I thought well that might finally be the wildest thing I saw all day. I will have to get the message of the billboard translated to see what is being advertised on probably relatively expensive ad space. Perhaps it is meant to attract out of town Vietnamese passing through, as I-40 is a busy transnational passage.


Wildest thing of the day ... ?
Nope, not yet.

When I got to the intersection of I-40 and Ross-Osage on the access road there was a cattle truck, 18 wheeler, in front of me, my lane, that appeared to be fixing to make a U-turn under the overpass. I thought, hmm, this going to be interesting, one of those square peg round hole maybe scenarios.

I think semi trailer rigs are about 13 ft 6 inches tall and there should be plenty of room to go under a 14 ft 4 in passageway, BUT, ... in this case it was interesting because right in front of me I saw the left rear tires go up onto the curb that had to have raised the left side at least 6 more inches and stay there as rig started under the bridge. I never heard any thing scrape or pieces go flying but I was cringing a bit hoping no cattle were scared in the cock-eyed cow container, a group form of cow tipping.

The rest of my day has been rather boring since.


7 comments:

Rob Z Tobor said...

I suspect the cattle truck had done that trick before although not with the same cattle in it.

As I live right on the edge of Wales I am used to seeing signs that I cant read in Welsh for all sorts of things, I understand even less Vietnamese and have never seen a sign written in it, although I'm sure it would look rather nice.

And I have never seen potato chips defying the laws of physics and aerodynamics. This may need the assistance of microchips to solve. I did once drive a long way down a busy road with my bag full of college work on the roof of my car until I had to stop in a queue and someone pointed to my car roof. My brain then clicked and I knew what was there.

esbboston said...

Rob: Question, was there an actual audible 'click' noise? If yes, then think of that as a Super Power, audible brain clicking, as easy as ABC.

There was a truck that damaged a bridge on nearly the opposite side, well, no, not opposite, just north and east of there that crippled a train bridge on the major loop that shut down the train access for the coal fired electrical generation plants for a while several months ago.

esbboston said...

Rob: Vietnamese has lots of interesting looking marks in a variety of places around the letters. I think we are down to only one real phở restaurant in Amarillo which my son and I both enjoy. I was going to go to the Vietnamese restaurant on that particular journey but I had to get back to Borger for meeting a freight shipment at my house. But the truck was several hours late because he totally blew a front tire and had to wait for roadside assistance! So I had been stuck at my house waiting while a crazy person was yelling and screaming at my wife at our printing business for about twenty minutes. Luckily my wife had several customers and an assistant trying to get the person to leave and keeping him from hurting her. The crazy person was lucky that my son or I wasn't there to deal with him.

Rob Z Tobor said...

I hope the crazy person is just passing and not a regular crazy person. Maybe your wife could tell them of a good bridge to see cow tipping. Although I can't be sure it is possible that crazy people like cow tipping.

esbboston said...

I would think that cow tipping, an activity usuaLLy practiced at night, prefferably under a fuLL moon, would be something that lunar-tics would thoroughly enjoy.

fmcgmccllc said...

The flat thing in paragraph two where the potato chips is commonly referred to a package tray in the industry. Don't know why as if you filled it up with packages you could not see out the rear glass. There are some real weird names for car parts in the industry.

esbboston said...

fmcgmccllc: I figured that you would know the right name.

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