Home after a great trip seeing the kids for their birthdays…
Hmmm, guess I need to stop calling them kids, since THEY have kids of their own… Or not… 🙂
Nothing like early morning drives in rental cars over strange roads through hills and valleys in the fog. And just to add a little spice to the trip, meeting a oversize load in the valley, in a curve with flashing lights everywhere is guaranteed to up the pucker factor. Took me 15 minutes to get the seat cushion out of my ass when I got to the airport!
This was a ‘light’ spot in the Tule fog!
And then there was the aging dope smoking, hemp wearing hippie at the airport…
Five minutes of back and forth with the coffee girl over how to prepare her soy ginger latte…
Then another five minutes bitching that they didn’t have locally grown honey, and how old is this sugar in the raw, and was it sustainably processed.
I’m afraid I ‘might’ have used a few unkind words to her… Something to the effect that we would like to get our coffee before hell froze over or she died of old age, and if she hadn’t smoked so much dope she ‘might’ have enough brain cells left to actually make a decision. Sigh… Yes I was a ‘tad’ grumpy yesterday morning!
And one more ‘weird’ Cali thing… This ONE leaf was flapping like hell, and not another leaf was moving in the tree!
I must have watched it for five minutes (yeah, yeah, I know… SQUIRREL). And it never fell. Gotta give it props for trying though! 🙂
HIEBP. Hippie Induced Elevated Blood Pressure. For me it usually happens when I accompany my wife to Whole Foods.
Our hippies are weirder than anyone else’s hippies with the exception of Portland’s own. Which is to say that Austin hippies have a standard of freakishness to aspire to. And that’s not a good thing.
Hey Old NFO;
Welcome home…again!
@LL – Austin hippies have a tinge of redneck. Not much, but IMO it elevates them above standard-issue hippies.
NFO – no fog here, but you might need some suntan lotion.
Thanks…now I’ll be thinking about that leaf all day. 🙂
About 5% of the northern birch leaves refuse to fall, here, until the next spring’s buds pop out; have to rake leaves in the spring, grumble grumble.
Your line about the seat cushion made me spray my keyboard. A bit o’ heads-up would be appreciated, next time. 🙂
John- Another reason NOT to shop there…LOL
LL- We don’t WANT anymore Calihippies… You can keep them! 😀
Bob- Thanks!
Tim- LOL, it’s at least bright and sunny up here too!
GR6- Different kind of earworm… 🙂
Rev- Sorry bout that…
Sufficiently weird hippies are entertaining. It’s the ordinary in-the-way kind that are irritating.
Your traffic encounter reminds me: Mid 90s, driving back from Yosemite to San Francisco, lonely winding country two lane at night, following a distant set of taillights up a hill. As he crests over we can see his brake lights flare, so I get off the gas in a brand-new rental Towncar.
We crest over the hilltop, and jogging up the road, on our side of the yellow line, seemingly without a care about traffic, is the biggest bull I’ve ever seen. I became a believer in ABS that night, as the big Lincoln allowed me to simultaneously break sharply and steer around the bull using the gravel shoulder, without losing control.
Serious quicker factor for a while though — I’ve been less terrified of encounters with other cars.
Glad you got home safely and had a good time!
I’m sure the special snowflake coffee buyer was terribly offended by your helpful remarks.
Glad you got to spend time with the kids & grands.
Why are there always these coffeesobs when we are in a hurry?
I call tule fog the veil of sorrows, cause sure as shoot’n one of these days…
John- Good point!
Nik- Oh yeah, THAT is pucker power!!! Thanks!
WSF= Probably… 🙂
Dammit- Yep, it does bite!
I think we should have an open season on old hippies.
There is no place like home.
It’s nice to be above the fog-line, and having a week of sunshine between storms let me do the septic-dig! We don;’t go down the hill to Hippieland if we can avoid it!