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Complex Numbers #497593 added March 25, 2007 at 9:24pm
Restrictions: None
Not Optional Equipment
Yesterday was another "Drive around Virginia in my old pickup truck whose radio is broken" day. Having spent the last few weeks driving only from my house to my office and back, and little else besides, I hadn't been pushed to get the stereo fixed.
Yesterday, though, was the last straw. I borrowed my wife's boombox for the trip. (When she uses something of mine, it's not "borrowing," but it is when I use something of hers. Fortunately, I rarely want to "borrow" her clothes.) I grabbed the CDs that I made from the absolute best songs of my playlist, got in the truck and took off...
And discovered that the boombox won't play my CDs.
Shit.
I was able to tune in to a radio station sometimes on the box, but the land between Charlottesville and Fredericksburg is notably lacking in radio. Oh, there was some country stations, and some guy telling me all about Jesus (as if I'd never heard of Jesus in all my 41 years). When I did pick up something decent, it faded in and out every time I passed a large concentration of metal, such as a car, mailbox or Civil War battlefield (each of which is about as common as the others on this trip).
Sadly, I was running on a deadline, or I'd have stopped in Fredericksburg to pick up a new boombox, one which my wife could then take and maybe let me borrow it from time to time. Well, actually, I did stop, because Fredericksburg has become so choked with traffic that it makes the Long Island Expressway look like, well, an expressway.
But that was nothing compared to the trip back. Route 1 in Stafford County, going south into Fredericksburg, was backed up for - I'm not kidding or exaggerating here; I've driven that stretch enough to know - Five Fucking Miles.
I figured, wow, there must be some kind of accident up ahead. Occasionally, there'd be a car coming north, laughing at us poor fools in the southbound lanes. But as I inched - tunelessly - along down the road, it dawned on me that the source of the backup was...
The Falmouth light.
Yep, one single intersection - the one where Route 1 and Route 17 business converge - backed up traffic for five miles.
And they ask me why I don't live near Fredericksburg anymore.
Now, as it was Saturday, ordinarily this would have been at worst a minor annoyance. I wanted to be home, sure, but I could have dealt with it. If, that is, I had some tunes.
No. Instead, periodically, some snippet of the worst possible tune would come into my head. I don't even remember now, nor want to, what it was. Something from a commercial, or something. Or maybe it was some tune I knew when I was a kid, because that area would bring back memories like that - it was the route my parents used to drive me on to kindergarten. Hell, it might have been "if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands" - but then, if it were, you'd be reading about me in the paper right now instead of in my blog.
Today I went to Crutchfield, only to discover (though this didn't surprise me) that they don't have stereo people on Sundays.
Tomorrow, though. And I don't care if I have to take time off work to do it. |
© Copyright 2007 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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