I drove back up to DC on Monday night for a meeting yesterday and then drove back last night.  That’s about 10 hours of driving that eventually led to a lot of random thoughts from my AD-dled mind.  Among them:

• There’s a sign on I-95 south that says ‘Leaving Highway Safety Zone."  What the hell does that mean?  Am I entering a "Highway Death and Dismemberment Zone?"
• High gas prices have led the highways to look to me like 1978 all over again.  That was the year my Mom bought the original Honda Civic (it replaced our decrepit Ford Pinto…you know the Ford that exploded when rear-ended as opposed to the Ford that rolled over) and I can remember driving to NC to visit my grandparents and feeling like we could drive under the 18-wheelers if we wanted to.  I also remember unintentional lane changes due to wind gusts which made the drive fairly entertaining.  Well on my drives this week I saw many cars that looked remarkably like the old Civics and made my little Saturn look like a limo by comparison.  I hope to god the drivers of those things hit nothing bigger than a squirrel because if they do they lose.
• If I’m going to be doing these long drives more often (quite likely since air fares have about tripled in the last month or two) I might need a bigger car.  My Saturn gets great mileage but I can’t fully extend my legs and after an hour or two I feel like someone has poured cement into my leg joints.  I could live with it before, but my body has discovered it’s 40 and is screaming at every little disservice I present it.
• Having an AD-dled mind sucks.  In the span of 10 miles something reminded me of someone I forgot to reimburse in college for tickets to a concert (Billy Joel I think) and I wondered if I could find her to get her the money. Then I wondered if I was the world’s greatest underachiever at the age of 40…I mean what have I done that anyone will remember even before I die, much less after?  Then I wondered why I was trying to hold in a fart even though no one could possibly smell it, except perhaps my lovely wife who can seriously smell them from miles away.  Seconds later I was wondering why skunks constantly run onto highways and get hit other than to give me cover to fart.  Then I thought about how I’ve been playing tennis for much of my life but I still suck at it and that got me thinking why I always think so negatively.  Am I a manic depressive?  Well, no I’m probably just hungry since I usually get down or pissed-off only when I’m hungry, or around brats, or both.  Wow, I’ve gone 10 miles…where the hell am I and I wonder if I should stop to get something to eat?
• I’ve made this drive between DC and NC countless times over the last couple of years yet I’ve never passed, or been passed, by a hot woman driving in a convertible but I’ve seen hundreds of fat middle-aged men in convertibles.  That’s not fair, although I will say it’s fairly entertaining to see a guys comb-over flowing behind him at 70 mph.
• XM Radio is a god-send.  I was able to listen to game 7 of the
  Stanley Cup finals on the trip north and game 6 of the NBA finals on
  the trip south.  And I didn’t have to suffer through the radio abyss
  that is I-85 between Petersburg, VA and Durham, NC.  And since I’m not
  enough of an audiophile to have a good MP3 collection that abyss is
  horrible without the satellite.
• Hockey is hard to listen to when you don’t know much about it.  I
  was cheering for the Carolina Hurricanes but found I ended up
  inadvertently cheering for the Edmonton Oilers every once in a while
  when I misidentified a player/team relationship.  Still it was exciting.
• The NBA sucks.  I know all the players, am a huge basketball fan,
  had a rooting interest in the game (Josh Howard of the Mavericks went
  to Wake Forest) and yet I yawned for much of the game.  I used to love
  the NBA playoffs, but for some reason these days I find it about as
  compelling to watch as a Spelling Bee.