HMCIMB Interval 0

Moderators: Sluggo, Amskeptic, Jivermo

Post Reply
User avatar
Amskeptic
IAC "Help Desk"
IAC "Help Desk"
Status: Offline

HMCIMB Interval 0

Post by Amskeptic » Sun Oct 04, 2020 6:18 pm

This is 2020, a most unusual year. I have not let you all in on just how much this tour has fit right in on all the other weirdness this year has brought in.

Interval 1 posted elsewhere in this forum, neatly took off from my visit with Deanah, but good grief, getting there was something else.

See, I left Pensacola FL with a hurricane track promising to show up somewhere on the Gulf Coast.
I was in no mood for the dousing that was to come find me if I decided to visit Kentucky, so I decided to beat it west. Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma. I got a friend in Amarillo, I am going there.

But what on Earth happened in Oklahoma? I saw a nice rest area, and a little gravel path down to a tree with a turn-around, yay! I will mix up some paint and touch up the front end of Naranja. Enjoyed my little natural paintbooth glen, but nooo, some guy in a white pick up truck has to park down there just a few feet from my bumper, and he sits there staring at me. WTH? I finally forget that he even exists, so immersed am I in my project, but now there is a green Dodge pick-up that comes down there. I am too far in to pack it up, so I soldier on with my brush and cans and caps and GumOut and test dots (that are wiped off as soon as I can see if they matched or not). I am, as usual, very poorly dressed and up to here with oranged paper towels. One of the guys comes around, "are you OK?" "Yes I am OK, I am painting!" That is weird, that someone solicitously asks a stupid question when they can see with their own eyes that I am engrossed in a project. Really. Was he expecting me to respond, "thank God you are here, help me paint these rock chips ..."? Then the OTHER guy comes around, "hey, do you need help?"
"NO thank-you, I am just painting some rock chips then I am hitting the road."

But then I see the chunky guy go off in the bushes nearby, what, does he have to take a leak? the restrooms are just up the hill why didn... oh no, the other guy follows him. Oouf, I go back to painting crouched down at the front bumper and just pay really close attention to my touch-up job. Well, finally, I am out of paint, and I need to clean the cap and the brush before they dry. Guy #2 comes out the bushes hitching up his pants and fiddling with his belt. Oh no, I need to leave. As I drove out, I spy a sign, "Oklahoma Day Rest Area: if you see any questionable behavior or loitering, please call ***-***-****. Good grief.

I make it to the outskirts of Amarillo. Halfway through some Facebook post, I am assaulted with stabbing pains in my lower abdomen. Appendicitis? I run through my abdominal pain diagnoses, and nothing is coming up. No fever. No digestive anomalies. No peristolic cramping, just straight stabbing. Did I accidentally rip my abdominal muscles when I did those weird backwards crunches on a picnic table? Hauled off to bed and carefully did not move from a cadavar-in-the-coffin position. Woke up. Was that just a bad dre ... no no, the pain is here only worse. Could not stand straight. Could not cough or laugh. Digestive system was totally quiescent. No fever. Called Deanah. "Try a Tylenol, if the pain diminishes in any way, it is muscle-based." Well, it did a bit.

Back To The Hurricane
Wooncha know it, the leading side of the rotation picked Pensacola. I saw it on the evening news. Downtown streets just blocks away from the Law Firm, I could see their names on the signs, and cars up to their wheel wells in water coursing by.
Pensacola91620.jpg
Pensacola91620.jpg (65.54 KiB) Viewed 3630 times

Then I saw that nice new bridge across the bay that had just up and lost a section to an errant barge. Jack lives across that bridge! Not gonna ask him to go check up on my creampuff Lexus in its watery new grave, heck no, Jack's bus is parked right next to it. He's probably hanging in a tree somewhere anyway with his house in another tree. Called Rodney The Pilot. Well, Rodney drove by the next day and snapped a picture. Sunny. Not even branch debris in the parking lot. No water. "Rodney, I can hardly see the picture on this flip phone, but it looks like a normal sunny afternoon, don't screw with me." "It's fine! That picture was what it looks like! It's fine down there, getting there was the tough part. Get a better phone!"
Called Jack. He sent me a picture of the collapsed bridge section. "Keep your foot on the gas," I wrote back, "you'll clear it." He wrote back, "especially in 3rd gear," which made me laugh and that was painful as hell.
HurricaneSallyPensacola.jpg
HurricaneSallyPensacola.jpg (75.33 KiB) Viewed 3630 times

Day Three, I barely got in Naranja. It felt like I was 99 years-old, every step ginger as hell. Read up on athletes who tear their rectus abdominis muscles. They say it "hurts". I tried stomach crunches. The muscles are fine. The pain is internal, but diminishing. I could drive, so I went to Deanah's house, written up elsewhere.


So, I am not dead of appendicitis or Covid-ravaged intestines, I can drive, the Lexus is not drowned to death. Things are looking up.
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

Post Reply