3/22/09

Since we're now in the age where some kind of harebrained law gets passed every few days, I have an idea. There ought to be a law stating that it is illegal for a sixty degree sunny day and a fairly heavy snowstorm to exist within ten minutes of each other. We may have to knock down a few mountains in order to ensure compliance, but hey, it's all about compromise.

I was rolling along and having a fairly enjoyable afternoon when I got into the hills outside Evanston. Holy jeez. It started snowing like a mutha. I looked down at my temperature readout and saw 34 degrees where the 60 had been, quite literally, ten minutes earlier. The road was still warm enough from the last few days that the snow was melting on contact but damn, it was like a whiteout there for a little bit.

The next blast of snow didn't come along until I was on the dive down into Salt Lake City. There were a few people coming down at 35mph and others whipping down at 70mph, so it was like playing dodge 'em cars for me as I tried to maintain a safe and reasonable pace. But hey, that's what truck drivers do, or something.

You know, while I've got those 535 degenerates listening, here's another law for them to pass. If a town's truck stops are all full, then truck parking should be allowed on any street with enough space. To borrow some internet jargon from yesterday - WTF? Flying J. Filled and overflowing. Sapp Brothers. Filled and overflowing. Pilot. Filled and overflowing. Other Flying J. Filled and overflowing. WTF? They set their clocks funny out here, so it was only 7pm. This is ridiculous.

So there I found myself, with no knowledge of the local streets and no bright ideas. Time for a little rudderless cruising. One general rule - if I see a big truck driving on a street, then that street is worth checking out. It took some cruising for a little while, mainly since every warehouse with a 'for lease' sign appeared to be occupied in some manner. Eventually I found a little side street in an industrial area back over by the Sapp Brothers (which was still overflowing when I cruised through for a second time). There are no signs saying that I can't park here and there are a couple of trailers dropped on the next block. Screw it. Good enough.

I think I have a pretty good idea of where I'm heading in the morning. The numbering system for the streets in this Godforsaken city leaves something to be desired. They seem to count in one direction on one side of the freeway and another direction on the other side, with a bunch of N,S,E, and W nonsense mixed in. The directions on my Qualcomm are fairly vague and ambiguous. Luckily for me, Mr. Gore was kind enough to invent the internet quite some time ago and I was able to take a good look at the aerial layout of the region. I'm at least somewhat confident that I know where to go. As I'm prone to say... time will tell.