There and Back Again

This weekend I drove to Marin County to take care of some unfinished business left over from our move to Oregon, and to see our daughter. Following are random musings from the trip...

Seen on the backside of a big truck: An arrow pointing to the left with the words, "Passing Side" and another arrow pointing to the right with the word, "Suicide!"

The road-side sign that reads "ASSBLOWERS" instead of "GLASSBLOWERS" is still in its GL-less state.

There's a store I like, just south of Redding, called the Australian Hat Outlet. They sell Australian Hats. Thousands of hats (and other stuff). Last month when Connie and I stopped there, the saleswoman took the fedora I was wearing and, while we were talking, proceeded to clean it of the lint and hair the hat had collected. She did an excellent job, better than I've been able to accomplish with the lint brush I use, so I stopped there again this trip to see if I could buy the sponge she used to de-lint the hat. The saleswoman wasn't there, she's on the road with her hubbie doing hat sales, but there was a salesgirl there who helped. me. Or rather, an anti-salesgirl...

The lovely anti-salesgirl said that they do sell the sponges, but that I could also use stale, day-old sourdough bread. Rather than clean my hat with bread, I went ahead and purchased the sponge. She told me to clean counter-clockwise around the hat, because the grain of the hat goes clockwise. I had no idea!

The shop also had bullroarers, which I have read about but never seen nor heard or used. The anti-salesgirl didn't know how to use them, so I asked if I could try one, and she said sure. (I love a girl who says yes.) A bullroarer is a wooden weight at the end of a long string swung to make a loud sound. I was reticent to swing it around at full length and full speed in the store, lest I hit something or someone, so I tried it with a short length of the string, and it hummed a bit, but I don't think I got the full effect. Rather than risk life and limb, I chose prudence over valor and returned the device to the shelf. I then noticed that everyone in the store was watching, hoping to see it work. I'd let them down. But I redeemed myself...

I have some didgeridoos at home, which I've practiced playing a little, and by a little I mean with little success. I can make some noise, but not for long and not like I hear when there's a didge played in a movie or in music. The hat store had a collection of nicely painted PVC didges in a corner. The anti-salesgirl said she couldn't play them, but I was welcome to try, which I did. It was great! I guess the ones I have at home aren't very good. The difference, I think, is that this one had better bends in the tube (it has deeper bends, and has two bends rather than the ones at home which have one bend, or none). When I looked up, after making some cool didge sounds, the whole store was watching and listening, and I was told it sounded great. Yay me. I now have another didge in my collection. For an anti-salesgirl, she did pretty well. At least they look cool.

I stayed again at the Doubletree Hotel in Rohnert Park. I'd brought with me one of my radio-controlled helicopters, and I was hoping to fly it in the hotel's ballroom, but when I went to ask if I could use the ballroom, it turned out that a local company was using the ballroom for their "holiday party". The nerve! They called it not a Christmas party but a holiday party, and this being January, it's past the holidays anyway! So I flew the heli in my room.

As I was chatting with Debbie, the subject of driving came up, and I suggested to her that she should "Drive as if your life depended on it." She liked that. So did I.

On my way home, I saw a chubby guy hitch-hiking along the side of the road. He was wearing a baseball cap, shorts and sandals, and had his T-shirt pulled up over his nose. It was four degrees below freezing outside. (In Fahrenheit. I don't know how far below freezing it was in C, Michelle.) Now, I felt sorry for the guy, thumbing in sub-freezing weather, but I decided not to pick him up. A guy who hitches in weather like that in shorts has issues of some kind. And I couldn't see his face. Hopefully someone else picked him up shortly. Was I wrong?

So how was your weekend?


Blog Tag: Chatter