We had to take a two hour trek to the big city for my daughter. She was looking at colleges, and we had scheduled a visit with the main one she was interested in.
My husband is anal about timeliness. His idea of on time is 30 to 60 minutes early. I’m certain he is in his own private hell, being the sole male in a household of women – all without his concept of “being on time”.
On this particular morning, my husband woke us up at 5am. Being an insomniac and early riser myself, I’m not against getting up that early when the necessity arises; but mind you, our appointment was two hours away and not until 10am. For once I was sleeping good and actually could have slept in, so I felt like throttling him.
We all dragged out of bed and got ready for the trip. The cup of coffee that the hubby shoved into my hands was good, but not enough to improve my mood. Not surprisingly we were ready to go in record time, and there we sat for another hour. That could have been another hour of sleep… the jerk.
Finally, we were herded out the door. I remembered that I left my Google printed maps on the table, went back into the house and grabbed them. Tried to go down the list of things we needed in my morning fogged brain; finally determined that we had everything. Off we went.
We settled for the trip. We were a few miles down the road, discussing the route, and pulled out the first Google map. It was supposed to be from our house to the college. It took a few puzzled moments to realize that the directions were in reverse. Disgusted, I tried to figure out how that happened.
The night before, my daughter had entered the college address into Google maps, as I was trying to teach her how to create and print directions. I had shown her where to find the “Get directions ‘from here’ ‘to here’”. She had
accidently hit “from here”. Mistake number one.
But I had caught it and had her switched the address fields. Then the printer refused to print. Mistake number two.
We had spent a few minutes working that issue out.
Finally, we were able to resend the directions to the printer, but I remembered that I had not re-checked at that point to make certain that directions were correct. We must have hit the back button at some point during the confusion with the
printer, reverting to the reverse directions. Mistake number three.
I was rewriting the directions in reverse, and then remembered that in the larger cities just reversing the directions
doesn’t usually work because the on and off ramps weren’t usually together… damn it!
We saw the signs to a rest stop and decided to stop and see if they had a map… because of course, our map wasn’t in
the vehicle (it never was when we needed it). My daughter and I stayed in the vehicle as my husband went map hunting.
Behind the main rest area building beside what
appeared to be a small utility building, I noticed a state worker wearing one of those reflective orange vests holding a leaf blower. He cranked on it a couple times. Apparently it started as he checked the air flow and soon lifted it and waved it around the doorway of the building.
The leaf blower must have cut out. He pressed, what I assumed to be the gas primer, and pulled on the cable a couple more times. He looked at the side of it, probably adjusting the choke now, and yanked on the pull cord a couple more times. It must have started again as he checked the air flow, but it also must have stalled again as soon he was adjusting and yanking on the cord again.
You could tell he was getting pissed now, because he started yanking in earnest. I couldn’t help but laugh as his vest flopped violently around his torso with each yank. My daughter commented about how it must look like her when she was trying to start our push mower, and wishing we’d brought the camera.
The worker stopped cranking for a moment. His arm must have been getting tired from the furious yanking he was giving it (probably the most exercise he’d had in years). He paused a moment, adjusted his skewed vest, switched hands and started yanking at the cable with his left hand. It must have started again, because he rechecked the airflow and began waving it at the doorway again.
My husband returned with a map to see us in stitches from watching this poor guy.
As we pulled out of the rest stop and merged with traffic, continuing on our journey, it began raining. My day may have started out on the crappy side, but I was having a better day than the state worker with the leaf blower.
