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2004-08-11 - 8:48 p.m. weekend and stuff I had a rental car over the weekend that had one of those parking brakes that you engage and release by stomping a pedal in the left of the floorboard. My first car had the same kind, and that habit gets revived so easily when I have a rental car like that. I'm been home since Sunday evening, driving my darling little green tourbus, whose parking brake is set with a hand lever between the two front seats. And yet every time I pull in and park somewhere, I keep trying to stomp some non-existent brake pedal. With luck I'll get out of that habit again soon, before I put my foot through the floorboard. I have always called that thing the parking brake, though I guess a lot of people call it the emergency brake. I was always taught to put that on when I parked a car. I know a lot of people weren't, though. One way I know this is by the number of people who have been freaked out when they went to drive a car after I'd parked it, and they put the car in gear and couldn't get it to go anywhere. Maybe I was taught to use the parking brake because when I was learning to drive, I lived in a house that was on a bit of a hill, with a driveway with a definite incline. Anyway, it's now part of my routine. The trip this past weekend was almost last minute - those four words happened to me again, "extra front row ticket." Very out of the way place, but another chance to see my band, enough time to spend a half day sightseeing in a place I'd never been, and then a really fun concert in front of a crowd of 15,000+ people. It was also fun that just by being there, I surprised a few of the crew, and even RSP. It's rare for me to surprise him, I guess because he just expects me to be everywhere. But as I said, this place was really out of the way, and I guess they didn't expect to see even the most usual of suspects. But what a wonderful trip, and so much gorgeous scenery along the extremely too long and twisty five-hour drive between the airport and the venue (did I mention it was out of the way? Trust me, really really WAY out of the way). Gorgeous scenery would include the deer standing by the side of the road, if it hadn�t been directly in front of my car about 0.7 seconds before standing by the side of the road. Boy, there's a really bad adrenaline trip for ya. Driving along on an empty highway early in the morning, minding your own business, all of a sudden YAAAAAAAAAA! Rear end of a deer flies by the front of your car, so fast you didn't even see the front end go by first, although it did, being attached to the rear as it was, and the deer having been traveling forward and not backward. No time to really do anything other than take my foot off the gas before the whole thing was over. Except for the last bit of looking in the rear-view to see the deer standing in the grass, giving me the, "Hey! I'm leaping here!" evil eye look as I drove away. On a different note, these are my most recent favorite spam subject lines: "We Do The Talking For You compare karma doldrum bravery corbel jerky pus elegy metropolis apostate punky digitalis jacksonian" (if that's how you're gonna talk, I'll do it myself, thanks) trout bauble (pretty!) my mood - |
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