Quotes I like:

“Not all those who wander are lost.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien

Monday, January 3, 2011

Happy New Year from the Road!

Well in true form, I spent New Year's Day travelling.  Drove back to the frozen north spending first 12 hours and then 7 hours the next day on the road.  I am destined to go places! Just not sure where they always turn out to be!

I do love driving around the country.  It is so much more pleasurable than flying, which I hate to do. I don't mind the actual flying so much, although the very crowded condition of planes these days is a deterrent. I hate the whole process of flying.  I hate having to check in, go through security, wait to board, worry that some idiot will drop their bag on my head as they load it in the overhead bin and then seeing the whole process repeated once the plane lands. I would gladly fly around if I had my own private jet! Since that is not going to happen, I choose to drive.

Driving lets me stop when I want, eat when I want and what I want and see things I would never have seen otherwise.  I have had more adventures driving around the country than anyone on a plane ever could.  I have stumbled onto great finds including wonderful restaurants, festivals, scenery and just great times! It is fun to meet new people from different areas and see how they live their lives.  I have, however, found a number of riddles on my travelling, to which I am still seeking the answers.  Many seem to concern shoes, but shoes are, after all, a big part of my life. So here are the riddles. If you know the answers please enlighten me!

Why do you find one shoe in the middle of the road?  How does someone lose just one shoe? Were they hanging their feet out the car window and one fell off?  Were two people fighting in the car and one threw a shoe at the other and it went out the open window? Was someone walking down the road and their shoe came off?  I can't imagine how this happens.  And if you lost a shoe in the road wouldn't you stop to get it? Why not? This is a total mystery to me. Although I can attest that I have lost one shoe myself when I was in a car accident many years ago.  It was a fairly bad accident and I was trapped, injured in a crushed car. The firemen had to come with the jaws of life to cut me out of the car. When the ambulance workers lifted me out to place me on the stretcher I felt one of my shoes fall off and asked them to get it.  I was bleeding from a number of areas and covered with broken bits of glass and probably suffering from internal injuries.   They looked at me like I was a lunatic and probably thought I had brain damage (which is a possibility with or without the car accident) but I didn't want to lose that lovely, black peau de soie pump. (see shoes are really a big part of my life!) The shoe ended up on the road, in the rain.  I morned for it for some time.

Also, I see a fair amount of shoes dangling from overhead wires.  I assume that some perpetrator(s) put them there to taunt the shoes owner, but why are they still there?  Aren't there wire maintenance people out there who come and take them down after awhile?  What caused the shoes to be tossed up there? Surely there there are poor, starving people somewhere in this world who need shoes (my mother always swore there were poor, starving children in the world who would love to have the dinner I was turning my nose up at) Seems a waste to have shoes just hanging on wires.

Of course, since I have a strange brain that works this way, I conjure up images of poor children running around the streets of a third world country wearing all sorts of strange shoes which have been saved from wire dangling. Maybe we should start a new charity which rescues these shoes and sends them to poor, starving children. I can see the tv ad now -  Won't you please help rescue these shoes?  Some poor starving child in need could use these shoes. Please donate now so we can purchase ladders and postage to save the shoes and starving children! Maybe we could also rescue the abandoned shoes in the middle of the road and maybe we could pair them up and send those shoes to the poor, starving children.

Anyway, the mystery of the shoes remains unsolved. I won't rest until I know the answers!

Happy New Year from the road!

1 comment:

  1. When I was in CA - I was told that it was to stake gang territory - not sure if same everywhere though.

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