I left Michigan on Tuesday morning at 5 AM to return to Florida and the drive turned out to be a struggle. The first hour and a half was through blowing snow with temps in the mid teens. The passing lane was slick so I drove behind whoever was going the slowest in the right lane.

The only complaint I have about my Jeep is that the windshield wipers don’t do a very good job when it’s cold. So as I followed that slow vehicle (a semi), a ton of dirty, salty, oil slicked water was sprayed on the windshield. I turned the wipers on and they touched the window at the very top and the very bottom but didn’t do anything in my field of vision.

I couldn’t see anything through the encrusted film so I hit the washer. The fluid came out and didn’t help at all on my side but the passenger, if there had been one, could see very well. I must have looked like an idiot driving down the highway leaning as far to the right as I could so I could see the road. I stopped for breakfast just North of Indianapolis and, by then, the wipers had warmed up enough to clean the whole window. Of course, by that time, it was sunny and I didn’t need them. I’m sure they’ll continue to work perfectly until I really need them again.

I had been hearing about a three truck accident that had I-69 closed down at the second Pendleton exit. I didn’t know where that was so I asked the crew at the Waffle House and told them about the wreck. The wreck was two exits farther South and one of the patrons said they were exiting traffic at the next exit. My waitress went ballistic ‘cuz her boyfriend was a trucker, but when I told her what time the accident had happened she knew it wasn’t him because he hadn’t left by then. She was so rattled that when I got my bill, I noticed that $6.80 plus $.40 tax equals $6.20 and, yes, I told them about the mistake.

The accident had happened at 7 AM and it was around nine, so I figured they were close to being cleaned up. I looked at the expressway before I got on and traffic was running smoothly, so I figured there weren’t any problems. WRONG!! I just got on and went 1/4 mile when the traffic slowed to a crawl. It took me an hour and a half to go 4 miles and I exited with a zillion trucks and a handful of cars.

Once off I figured I could take the detour, get back on quickly, and away I would go. WRONG!! The exit was at State Highway 67 and there was a traffic light at the crossroad. Only four trucks could make it through on each cycle, so we crawled for another 15 minutes before I made the turn onto 67. I got through that light and figured traffic would clear out quickly. WRONG!! There was a town right there and, that time, six trucks could get through each cycle at each of the three lights.

I turned South off the detour and took Highway 9 from Pendleton all the way past Indianapolis and halfway to Louisville. I made good time and saw parts of “Americana” I’ll probably never see again. I had lost about an hour and a half, but the traffic was light so I was moving right along.

I got to Nashville and decided to take Briley Parkway along the Northeast side of town and bypass the mass of Interstates that all come together. There was some construction but traffic wasn’t held up much since it was 2:30 PM their time. I got on I-24 headed for Chattanooga and figured I’d make up for some of the time I lost. WRONG!! Two miles down the road the traffic was stopped. Again it was a zillion trucks, a half zillion pickup trucks with gun racks in the back window, and a handful of cars.

There was construction and four lanes went down to two in a quarter mile. I was in the “patsy lane” where all the people in the lanes that are ending go flying by, then squeeze in ahead of us. It took a half hour to go that quarter mile and I figured traffic would speed right up. WRONG!! On the other side of the expressway there were two tanker trucks in an accident and the people on our side were going slow and gawking. I didn’t drop into a fit of road rage since the semis are way bigger than the Jeep and the guns in those gun racks in the pickups were probably loaded.

The rest of the trip went smoothly without incident. I stopped for the night in Dalton, Georgia and the temperature was predicted to drop into the high twenties. I had six cases of home-brew in the car and two of the cases had just been bottled. After bottling, the ale I had brewed needed warm temperatures for the yeast to carbonate the beer. I was afraid the cold would kill the yeast and it never would carbonate and I didn’t want the other beer to freeze either, so I carried all six cases of beer into the room and turned up the heat to 70 degrees. I’m sure the neighbors figured I was going to have one heck of a party that night and eagerly awaited their invitation. I must have looked really dumb carrying out those six cases at 3:30 AM when I awoke and left.

I stopped at another Waffle House for breakfast and sat at the counter. I was only there about twenty minutes, but during that time, with no one to talk to, I quietly observed what was going on. The cook was missing all of his upper front teeth and appeared to be a “little slow”. It only took me five minutes to see that the cook and my waitress, a woman around 35 that looked like she had just stepped out of the 1950s with “big hair”, had something going together. They were married, but based on the conversations, it was not to each other. And they both didn’t have any use for the “floater”, a youngish woman who worked the cash register, made coffee, cleaned tables, but didn’t waitress or cook so, to them, didn’t work.

Just (I’m Beginning To Hate That Drive) Jack