A TRIP OUT AND BACK - AS IN
OUT OF TOWN.
If you ever needed proof that
an infallible GOD who built the cosmos and set the planets in motion and
oversees the universe doesn’t exist you only need to visit a gynecologist
office and see all the women needing medical service. Even disallowing periods, PMS and
menopause; women’s plumbing and reproductive systems break down more often that
a 1964 Rambler station wagon. You
would think the perfect creator could have come up with a more trouble free
system: or else you have to conclude that he actually does despise women.
My wife had an appointment
with her doctor in Portland (Maine
enjoy a good seafood restaurant,
remain a second
night after her appointment and then return home leisurely.
But as Stephen king wrote in Pet Cemetery: when the baby wandered into the road and just missed being killed by a
semi-truck:
It didn't happen that way – he
goes on to describe the body of the baby being sucked under the truck.
A major storm (for this time
of the year) came across the mid west and roared into Maine
About 20 miles from home there is a huge hill
to climb and then descend - and this was on our minds the entire trip. We crested the hill in third gear with no
problem and then descended in second gear.
I am so impressed with this little Toyota RAV-4’s handling on ice and
snow that I should be a spokesman for the company: the computer controlled
independent all-wheel-drive constantly adjusted each tire for the road
conditions and made the trip back uneventful.
We got back at four-o-clock:
I fired up the wood stove and then broke out the snow blower to get a jump on
the plowing. After supper we lost
electricity, as we knew we would, but got it back about daybreak.
Early this morning, after a
banana and a glass of milk, I tackled the snow clearing. We received well over a foot in a
twenty-four hour period and so it took more than two hours to clear.
Now, back inside – the wood
stove is pumping – a hot cup of tea – and all is right with the world.
I love winter; but I think I
am ready for mud season (also known as spring here in the Western
Mountains of Maine
the Ol’Buzzard
I don't miss the Minnesota mud season any more than I miss the sub zero temps.
ReplyDeleteNow the 3 days after the frost goes out and mud season is done and the skeeters come out is almost haven!
Have fun!
We have a much older version of a similarly reliable car - a 94 Geo Tracker. Of course, she's strictly local these days. Any place further away than 50-60 miles we rent something newer.
ReplyDeleteI hope your wife is well and glad to know you made it home okay. We got that storm too but by the time it hit the coast here it melted pretty fast. Mud season is on the way.
I guess when it comes down to that I reckon I'm more Foolhardy than regular hardy like you, m'friend. N'S'far as wimmins plummin goes, God wudn't much of an engineer, that's fer shure. he put the entertainment center right next to the sewage facilities. Intelligent design, indeed ....
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful view from that window, O.B. .....
cheezopeeza...120 mile trip to the doctor....every once in while I feel put out here in rural France about the distances I have to go to get to the dentist, my doctor...a big city....I was pissed because my local canton, Hautefort...decided to centralize all the health services in a nice state of the art facility about 2 kilometers west of where my doctor was located...so now I have to drive 5 minutes more...there is a dentist there, but I have had the same dentist for years, a great guy and it's about an hour to where he has his office. Man, I see your pictures of what your winter is like. While you are trying to drive through that shit, I am in mortal fear of a cold snap...that's how fragile things are now. Your frigid weather makes my unending rain and much too warm winter. The rain finally stopped last week and the sun came out, Now, it is not even St. Patricks Day and I am in a desperate race to replant my strawberries and get the raspberries ready....because everything is pushing! There were flowers on the strawberries already! So, the last week, I have been crazy! I had to mow my hectare of grass, dig up all the strawberries, redo the plot, fork the raspberries and fertilize them and I have a sunburn...3 days in a row it was warm enough for me to work in shorts and no shirt! I still have to cut wood because at night it gets cool enough for a fire...If it gets cold again, we are as doomed as doomed could be. I got an email from the chateau I work for asking me if I possibly could come to work for them for 2 weeks in late April...because the grape vines are all beginning to push prematurely. I would like that, because at this point in time, trimming and cleaning 21 hectares of vines might be kind of relaxing...I find it very interesting to look at weather maps and see the interrelationship of North American Extreme weather powers the storms in the Atlantic...really, we have had one huge tempest after another all winter long. The Atlantic shoreline of France is forever altered...it has been wetter and warmer than any winter on record here.
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