GOC Central Beautiful Dunwoody Georgia

5771 miles
10 states
4 time zones
10 days

I skipped Days 9 and 10 so here they are..

Day 9. I had an easy drive from St. Joseph Missouri to Jefferson City Missouri so I hit the road late, around 9:00 AM. I took the long way to get there by driving down Highway 65 past Sedalia down to Highway 54. This was so I could drive by the Niangua arm of the Lake of the Ozarks where I used to have my cabin. I always like to drive through the Lake of the Ozarks just to see how much it has changed over the years. Back in the 70’s the Niangua arm was pretty deserted. It was 38 miles from the dam. It was great for water skiing since it wasn’t all that built up. No more. As I was driving through Osage Beach I saw a sign for a Dierbergs store. WTF? A Dierbergs? Here at the Lake? Dierbergs is a St. Louis supermarket chain. I wonder if they have gooey butter cakes, another St. Louis specialty? I was planning to stop at the Dierbergs in Illinois at Exit 16 of I-64 on the way home but if they have gooey butter cakes here I can save a stop. I rolled in the store and it was huge! I found the bakery and sho’ ’nuff they had them. Grabbed three of them and took them to checkout. I’d have one on Sunday and freeze the other two for later. A lot of people from St. Louis retired to Lake of the Ozarks so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at how much like St. Louis it has become. The roads are better now. It used to take four hours to get there from St. Louis. Back in the 70’s, I made it from my cabin to my mother’s house in two hours and 20 minutes. Of course, I was driving in the 90’s on I-44. Back then, I knew where all the radar traps were. Now, with I-70 and I-44 completed and the upgrades to Highway 54 and the other Missouri highways it should always take less than three hours.

After checking into my hotel, I went to see my friend Cliff who lives just outside Jeff City. I’ve known him since 1973 when we both started working for the Mattel Office Products Division of IBM. Both of us managed to escape OP and make it to the Field Engineering Division. Better pay and better management in the FE Division. I moved on to Atlanta as an instructor and he moved to Poughkeepsie as a technical writer. He then became a systems engineer (which used to be one of the best jobs in IBM) in Chicago where he got caught in a downsizing and lost his job. He got screwed. We both have spinal problems. Mine from an accident, his genetic. He served me some barbequed spareribs (which are now known as St. Louis style ribs) which were delicious. None of this baby back crap. These were nice and meaty. I missed him last year since I didn’t go on a road trip.

Day 10. Got up early since I had to drive 700 miles to get home. I filled up with gas before I started and got Mickey D’s coffee. Fortunately, it was Saturday so there was no traffic through St. Louis. All the traffic I encountered on the trip was driving fast. I set my cruise control on 75 and made great time. I only had to stop for gas once in Kentucky and got me a milkshake at the McDonald’s at Monteagle. Fortunately their milkshake machine wasn’t broken like the last time I stopped there. I made it home in 10 hours. I was beat!

This trip took a lot out of me. I went to bed around 10:00 PM and for the first time in I don’t know how long, I slept all night without waking up in the middle of the night. When I woke up Sunday morning, it was raining so I went back to sleep. Got up around 10:30 and ate breakfast (gooey butter cake) and read the paper. Then, I went to bed for another four hours. Got up and did the laundry and got all the trash out of the car. Gonna need to take it to the car wash this week.

I had planned my trip for ten days but I had packed for twelve. I saw everything I wanted to see and had a great time. My sister told me I should have gone up to Lake Louise but that would have been too far. Now, I’ve gotta start planning for next year.

This one is from Peggy U.

From Randy. (more…)

Pres sent me this.

Hillary: “Bill, how long am I going to be in here?”

Bill: “At this point, what difference does it make?”

St. Joseph Missouri

My cellphone alarm didn’t go off this morning because my battery was dead. Turned out I didn’t have the charger plugged into the car receptacle all the way. That’s OK. I woke up at the right time anyway. I only seem to sleep about five hours a night anymore. It was raining when I left which was OK since that cleaned the windshield. I usually like to get a coffee from Mickey D’s but there wasn’t one at the exit where I stayed and I didn’t come upon one until about three hours after I left Rapid City. Not a single freakin’ McDonalds in central South Dakota? WTF? I was over halfway to Sioux Falls before I found one.

I made good time today. Easy to do when the speed limit is 80. Too bad it dropped to 70 in Iowa and Missouri.

So, we found out more about this racist black asshole who murdered the two white people. He was gay and an Obungler supporter. He was also a Diversity (All Hail Diversity!) hire meaning the only reason he had been hired at all the places he worked was due to his skin color. I knew someone almost exactly like him.

Back in 1973 I was hired by IBM as a Customer Engineer in the Office Products Division. I repaired office equipment, mainly typewriters. This was back before Diversity (All Hail Diversity!) when it was called Affirmative Action. Around 1976, this chubby little black dude transferred into our office. This was his third office in two years. He started out in Springfield Missouri. He couldn’t make it there because he was incompetent and eventually he got so many complaints he wasn’t allowed to take any calls. Of course his excuse was everyone was racist. I spent a week in Springfield taking calls and compared to St. Louis, it was heaven. I wanted to be transferred there. In the week I was there I had about five customers wanting to fix me up with women they knew. I would have prolly wound up married.

So, he spent a year in the west office. Same thing. He got kicked out of too many accounts. Once again, it was because the customers were racists. It’s funny that none of the other black CEs had his problem.

Finally, they sent him downtown. Rather than addressing the problem of this dude’s incompetence, IBM kept moving him. Of course, downtown was the same story. He got kicked out of accounts because the customers were racists. By this time, the other black CEs hated this guy because he made them look bad. Eventually, the decision was made to fire him. Every time a customer complained, his manager asked the customer to write a letter. Believe it or not, this went on for a year. Yes. A full year. Then, his manager put him on a plan. He had six weeks to improve his performance or he would be terminated. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. Even after all that, his manager said that if he resigned, he would receive one month’s pay for every year he worked. he refused. He was fired. He went to EEOC and filed a suit against IBM claiming racism. Usually, IBM settles those suits just to make them go away. Not this time. They fought the suit and they had the documentation to support them. He got nothing. I guess the people involved got lucky this dude didn’t go postal.

Rapid City SD

Another nice driving day. I decided to drive by the Devil’s Tower on this trip. I’ve skipped it on all of my other trips. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s the rock formation in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Very impressive. The shortest route to get to it involved driving roads off the interstate. Guess what? I got caught up in two more Montana road construction projects. One was a doozy with a 20 minute delay. The other one was a 10 minute delay.

I was thinking about swinging past the Crazy Horse Memorial, but after checking the website, it doesn’t look like anything has been done the past two years since I was there last.

Howza ’bout that shooting this morning? It didn’t take long for the ghouls on the left to politicize it and call for more gun control. Thunder Rodent Thighs was the first one out of the box and the White House didn’t take long in joining in the chorus. Yannow, I don’t think we need gun control as much as we need black control. Yep! This was yet another black dude with a gun. What’s more he was a grievance black. He had a long history of looking to be offended and of accusing people of being racists. He had been fired from the TV station and had accused the reporter and cameraman of saying racist things about him. But seriously, if we removed black people from our crime statitstics, we are actually a very peaceful country. Blacks commit over half of the violent crime in this country. And let’s check out Chicago a liberal utopia.

These are almost all black people doing the shooting, killing, and dying. So we don’t need more gun control, we need more black control. Of course, I’m a racist for pointing this obvious truth out.

I wonder if Obungler will send any representatives to the funerals of the two white people shot by this guy who could have been his son? The killer, Vester Flanagan, was an Obumbler supporter. He also wanted a race war but since he’s black that’s prolly OK. Fortunately, he’s no longer with us. Maybe Oblunder will send people to his funeral.

One more thing. White lives matter.

Helena Montana

It was a beautiful drive up to Glacier National Park this AM. I didn’t realize Kalispell was as large as it was. I could have stayed there last night. It was the park’s 99th birthday today so admittance was free. How about that? Anyway, the Going to the Sun Road was all that I expected. It was beautiful even with the smoke from the fires. It was worth the trip.

Driving down Highway 89 after leaving the park was a pain. They had three construction projects where they had scraped off the pavement and there was only one way traffic and when my way got to go we could only drive about 25 MPH. I prolly lost about 30 minutes because of that. Looking at the map again I see I messed up. I should have just taken Highway 2 across to I-15. Would have saved a lot of time.

I see the stock market continued its dive today. Fortunately, most of my money is in bonds and other conservative stuff so the selloff hasn’t bothered me much. My 401-K is only down 3%. My utility stocks are down as well but that only makes the ROE better by allowing me to buy more stock at a lower price. I only have them for the dividend income.

Missoula Montana

Poor Washington and Idaho! The smoke is terrible! I feel so sorry for what the people are going through.

Got up this morning and drove to the Grand Coulee Dam. Sure would have been nice it it weren’t so smokey, but I was able to get close enough to get a good view. Yet another feat of engineering. I remember reading in grade school all about the Aswan High Dam. I saw the Aswan High Dam in the 90’s. It’s nothing compared to Hoover Dam or Grand Coulee Dam. Just think. We built a lot of dams in the 30’s. Most of them came in early and under budget. Of course, that’s before gummint became a hindrance to construction projects. I can’t imagine us doing any prpjects like this now what with the EPA, OSHA, and the environmentalists. Back then, a stimulus actually resulted in construction projects and not boondoggles. Check out nuclear plant construction. We have two new reactors being built in Georgia that are already three years behind schedule and over a billion over budget.

I left the dam and backtracked to Spokane and headed East. To get to Glacier, I should have turned off I-90 at St. Regis, but I continued down here to Missoula. The reason? Since I’m traveling in my chair, I like to stay in crip friendly rooms. The best way to do that is to stay at one of the big chains. To do that, I need to stay in larger cities. I do wind up spending more on rooms but as you all know, I am a SRF© so I can afford it. At my age comfort and convenience is essential and I’m willing to pay for it.

So what do you think? Correction or crash? I’m talking about the stock market. The liberals progressives rat bastard commies have been pointing to the stock market as proof that Obungler’s policies are working. The growth numbers are bogus as are the unemployment numbers. The only thing they really had was the market and that’s up ’cause the Fed has been printing money. Is the market now gonna collapse as well? Or is this China? I read a book two years ago called Currency Wars that stated that the next war was gonna be a monetary war between us and China. This could be the opening salvo. Or not.

What about those American heroes in France? Once again Americans have to save the French. Didja hear that the French crew locked themselves in a special compartment and wouldn’t let any passengers in? Typical French.

Tomorrow, I’m driving up to Glacier National Park and driving the Going to the Sun Road through the Park.

This one comes from Jane Austen.

This, of course, assumes you have seen The Terminator.

Spokane Washington

Smoke. Smoke. Smoke. It’s everywhere. From Western Montana through Idaho to Washington it’s smoke from all of the fires.

It was cold when I got up this morning in Billings. It was in the 40’s when I left. So, as I was driving I got to thinking of Denna Mora Campground. It was close to 60 years ago that we stayed there. It’s funny the things you remember from your childhood. My parents liked to travel but we didn’t have much money so we camped. This was back when there weren’t that many campgrounds and many of the ones there were were primitive. Denna Mora was one of them. The toilets were outhouses. The night we stayed there the weather was cold. It was drizzling. I remember Dad built a fire and we heated some rocks, put them in socks, and put them in the bottom of our sleeping bags.

Like I said, we didn’t have much money but we were still able to go on a two week camping trip almost every summer. We had a tent that slept four people so that took care of Mom, Dad, my sister and me. We had sleeping bags and air mattresses. We had a table that seated four and folded up into the size of a suitcase. We had a Coleman lantern and a Coleman stove. We had an ice chest. We had a set of metal dishes, pots, and pans that packed up into the biggest pot. With that we made enough camping trips that by the time I was 17, I had been in 47 states, Mexico, and at least three Canadian provinces (maybe more – I’m not sure). On the trip we camped at Denna Mora, we drove to Spokane just so we could say we made it to Washington. What was the state I missed? Oregon, and I picked that up in the 70’s when I went to see my sister in California. I have either swam or waded in every one of the Great Lakes.

Every time I take off on one of my road trips I am amazed at how much easier driving trips are today. For example, when we headed West, we often stopped the first night in Oklahoma City and spent the night with my Uncle Pump’s family. Back then, that was a long drive and we would have to get up early to get on the road. It would take us over six hours just to go the 300 miles across Missouri. This was back before I-44. Back then, it was Highway 66 and it was two lane most of the way. If you ever drive through Missouri now, you can often see an old two lane road running next to I-44. That’s old Highway 66. It went through every town so there would be stop signs and stop lights. We were always happy to finally hit Oklahoma where we had the two turnpikes. Back then, a good day was 350 miles. On this trip, I’ve averaged 650 miles a day.