How it works. But, in a repeat, Chocolate does not have caffeine. Imagine that, factual fallacies on the web.
Watched a fish “weigh – in” just around the corner from the trailer park, that was, to say the least, pretty weird. Half dozen bass boats, and from the sounds of it, the winning fish was a mere 2 and half pounds. For the lake in the middle of town? I’d throw that stuff back.
“So what sign are you?” asked the Taurus I was chatting with the other evening. Sagittarius, just plain and simple, harmless, even, being my reply. “You know what’s best for a Sagittarius?” No, what? “A ball gag,” said the Taurus.
I did spend more time than I wanted on trying to do the “Moveable Type” installation, to upgrade the journal software. Didn’t work quite right – might be me. Might be Mercury, too.
Gemini Rain
I went to a Gemini birthday part Saturday night. Stopping at the liquor store before hand, to grab a six-pack of Lone Star as a birthday gift, I ran into a Gemini at the store. Sort of set a tone…
The party was at the compound – three houses – and they are situated just off a very busy street and the access road to a major northbound artery, right at the corner of 6th Street and Mopac. The corner is an off-camber, decreasing radius blind turn. It tempts speeds in excess of the posted limited. To compound the situation even more, there’s an additional merge ramp – fortunately, at 2 in the morning, that one feeder road isn’t used too much.
For most of the evening, as partygoers drifted in and out, I sat on the porch of one house, watching the lightening flicker in the distance. “Nope, not going to rain here,” one guy kept holding forth. Never mind the fact the area could use a good deluge or two, as the local rainfall’s been rather sparse this year. Thus far.
But the blind corner? One resident, a Cancer, came out to the porch, turned his chair around, at first, I thought it was to watch the lightening. Then it all became clear. “Four minutes,” he said, glancing at his timepiece, “until the first one.”
It took seven minutes, but just about the time a few big drops of rain fell, there was the sound of tires spinning on asphalt, a flare of brake lights, and the first spin of the evening. An F-150 executed a picture-perfect, out-of-control slide. Textbook case of how not to drive on slick pavement. It was hilarious. After that first slide, the rest of the party turned their collective attention to the road and the entertainment.
A couple of facts need to be collated. It was two AM. In Austin, the liquor stops at this hour. In fact, by “bar time,” at 2 AM, the liquor faucets had been shut off for 15 minutes. Then, consider that we haven’t had any rain for while [and ignore the obvious tenet that Texans are notoriously bad drivers on anything remotely slick>. And, 6th Street is an avenue, about two miles down the road, which is literally lined with bars.
At one point, one guy was desperately trying to explain the physics, “See, it’s mass and velocity, and you combine the two, and….” “Volume. Don’t forget to factor in the alcohol volume. That adds to the equation.”
That one resident continued to expound on his theories, too. “It’s usually an F-150, not because they’re bad drivers, but because that’s the most common vehicle on the road,” he said, “or an SUV.” In either case, but especially with a truck with no load in the back, that corner must be easy to slip around. Just as he made his statement, another truck did the slip and slide, coming to a rest, pointing in the wrong direction.
In the hour, the party all gradually drifted down to corner, to get a better view. Close to a dozen vehicles did the 180 degree drift, taking the corner too hot, then realizing it as the back end broke loose. We started cheering for the losers. Maybe it’s mean, perhaps it’s callous or something, but the cheering got louder and louder with each spinout. The party was mostly intoxicated folks, in varying degrees of inebriation, but none of us were driving home that night.
There was, by the time I left, about a dozen or more spins. At least one white BMW did a full 360, and one SUV almost matched it, doing 3/4’s of a full circle. Finally, one truck driver, his windows down, couldn’t help but get upset because we cheered so loudly for obvious mistake. That driver had hard enough time pulling the truck back away from the curb.
Friday night, I listened to my friends play at a club. They closed with “Twilight Zone” previously alluded to, only, done with a definite country flare, maybe a touch of blue grass? Banjo, guitar and a guy in a cowboy hat singing the lyric, with a soulful, South-Austin, Texas twang. One of their opening numbers was a Townes van Zandt tune, with the lyrics about going to “down to the highway and listen to the trucks whine.” I thought about that, as another truck passed by, the back end fishtailing pretty good, then the driver, obviously not that intoxicated, steering into the slide, and bringing it back under control.
Life is good when you can sit there and watch the vehicles slide around. Best of all, though, is imagining the sheer panic as the tail begins to lose its grip, and the brake lights flare. It’s perfect.
