Did someone say NASCAR?

Friday night disc jockey duties!


Friday night...

Got out of work at 3:30 yesterday. What a blessing. Left work in a hurry before someone changed their mind! I got on the expressway with the idea of getting off downtown to shoot some pictures. As soon as I got on the on-ramp, I realized that traffic was backed up for miles and miles! I had no choice but to merge. There were three semi trucks right behind me that were working together, driving 3 abreast to hold traffic back ("breaker, breaker 1-9.") I thought maybe it was an accident or something, but when I finally got up toward the front, it was just road construction. It's true what they say about Michigan. There are only 2 seasons here: winter and road construction. (In the winter you lament because the roads are slippery and basically full of pot holes from the constantly changing weather and in the spring you get excited because the roads are good and easily passable; only to be held up wherever you go, whenever you go by road construction! "Viscious circle" is all I can say!)

When I finally made it downtown, it was past my normal quitting time already and my employer isn't more than a few miles away! Sad! I shot some pictures down town, then headed to Heritage Hill to get an overview shot of the city. It was a gloomy over cast day, so the pictures didn't turn out, but it was still nice to be away from work! I took off through cute little neighborhoods and slowly winded my way back toward home.

The slow ride up north was great. I took the back way home, put on some worthwhile tunes (Supergrass) and eventually got far enough away from civilization and traffic to drive a little faster and unwind a little!

When I reached the house, my dad was there with a 6 of Red Stripe. Got started drinking at 6 o'clock! After one, I decided to go for a walk to the corner and back. I was almost to the corner, when Casey rounded the bend in his little white truck, no doubt carrying many beers! I waved him down, my mission suddenly aborted, and hitched a ride back to the house. Many beers and shots later, Ken, Case and I went for another, slightly more tippy and loud walk to this cool dirt road in between two swampy areas that is really pretty. The clouds had cleared a little and it was a bit sunny, so we figured it would be a nice stroll.

We came up on my favorite road and something was awry. The road had been paved. When the hell did this happen? I am not the queen of the environment by any means, but I really felt like I had been punched. Suddenly, this beautiful area that I had jogged and walked through for a couple of years was no longer the serene landscape that I had grown to like so much. All of the wildlife around there seemed to have been interupted. You used to be able to see red winged black birds and hear the sounds of the frogs in the swamp. I started thinking about progress and how the rednecks around there were probably so excited to have a paved road. But, I'm not excited. I started to imagine how soon the alfalfa field would be the next sub-division and how in the 15 minutes that we spent on that road had shown how fast people thought they could drive through there now. Great, a race track (just add fuel to their back woods NASCAR mentality!) Just what we need with everyone's BIG gas guzzling Ford trucks that all the bumpkins think that they need for some reason. What a pisser.

We walked back to the house, had another drink and settled in to watch Ghost World. I snuck away early and went to bed. Slept hard until 8 o'clock this morning.