Another “Banner Day”

Filed under General Comments by Rob Buell at 5:01 PM.

It’s been another one of those “banner days” in my life.

A barbecue pulled pork sandwich was sounding pretty good around lunch and I decided to pick one up. Well, to make a long story short, the restaurant’s “boneless” meat wasn’t quite that and I bit down hard on a bone fragment hidden in meat and sauce. The resulting broken tooth, second from the back on the upper right side, broke around an existing filling.

I have an existing dental appointment scheduled for Monday, but instead of just a routine checkup and cleaning, I’ll undoubtedly be sitting in the chair a little longer so that I can be “fitted” for a new crown. If there’s any good news in all this it’s that there’s no pain involved…yet.

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The Celebrity Grim Reaper

Filed under General Comments by Rob Buell at 11:29 AM.

Have you ever noticed how the deaths of those with celebrity/notoriety always seem to occur just a few days apart? The most recent:

1. Ed McMahon (June 23rd, 2009)
2. Farrah Fawcett (June 25th, 2009)
3. Michael Jackson (June 25th, 2009)
4. Billy Mays (June 28th, 2009) (The pitchman for many “As Seen on TV” products.)

I wonder which group of unlucky souls the Celebrity Grim Reaper will visit next?

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The World’s Most Expensive Sticker

Filed under General Comments by Rob Buell at 10:54 AM.

I’d like to be able to say that it’s nice to be back in the Los Angeles area after my trip to Nebraska, but I can’t.

Well I can, but not with a straight face.

It’s definitely going to take me a couple of weeks to readjust to the reality of again being constantly tailgated by Chevy Tahoe, Suburban and Silverado drivers, whom I collectively refer to as being southern California’s “Chevy Truck Groupies.” I get an especially big kick out of the Chevy Truck Groupies who have California’s “Whale Tail” / save the environment license plates bolted to the fenders of their gas guzzling truck and/or SUV, but that’s another story for another day.

While on the subject of license plates, I recently received the vehicle registration renewal notice for my 2007 Chevy HHR. It came to a whopping $287!

If I’m paying this much for an HHR, I wonder what the Chevy Truck Groupies are paying? Mind you they are also paying at least another $50 for the “Whale Tale” plates, $90 if they want them personalized, which most seem to. Any way you look at it, that’s a lot of money to spend on a sticker that you only really look at twice a year — once when putting the new one on the plate and once when replacing it the following year.

At least my vehicle is new enough that I don’t yet have the inconvenience of biennial smog inspections. I’m not saving any money there, though. Instead of requiring the owners of newer vehicles to get a biennial smog inspection, California charges an annual $20 “smog abatement fee” for the first six years. I guess paying the extra $20 for each of those years makes my vehicle pollute less during that time; it must be something special they use in the ink on the registration sticker.

What really pisses me off about this bill is that it’s $85 more than last year, despite my vehicle being a year older!

This increase is due to California’s ongoing financial disaster, a disaster that I believe is no longer fixable by the current crop of yo-yo’s populating the capitol building in Sacramento.  At this point, I think it would be in California’s best long term interest if our elected leaders swallowed their pride and “turned to the same chapter” GM and Chrylser finally did: Chapter 11.

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Greetings from Richfield!

Filed under General Comments by Rob Buell at 5:52 PM.

Greetings from Richfield, Utah!

With roughly 2/3rds of my drive back to Los Angeles complete, I am nearing the end of my rather “topsy-turvy” vacation. Having spent half of it on the road, I never really got into “vacation mode,” yet another thing I can “thank” US Airways for.

There is so much incredible scenery across Utah that I feel bad about not stopping at the various scenic view areas along Interstate 70 despite having done so in the past.  (Some of the banner photos on this site were taken on a previous trip across Utah.) For some reason or another, I woke up this morning in Fort Morgan, CO with a serious case of “get-to-Richfield-itis.” My one enroute stop was in Grand Junction, CO for fuel and one of those lousy “prefab” gas station sandwiches.

I do have a “bitching point” that I’d like to direct towards the highway departments of both Nebraska and Colorado. When “coning off” a lane and slowing 75 mph traffic to 55 mph (or less), please make sure there is actual work going on. When one has a long drive ahead of them, it’s infuriating to have to slow down to pass through a work-free work zone. I’ve passed through several of these over the last two days — no workers, no construction equipment, no nothin’ expect for orange cones and “Speed Limit 55 – Fines Doubled” signs.

I’m planning to leave Richfield early tomorrow morning and expect to be back in the Los Angeles area between 1pm and 2pm; orange cones and 55 mph speed limits be damned.

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Another Long Drive Ahead

Filed under General Comments by Rob Buell at 8:16 PM.

Wednesday morning, I leave Homer, NE and start the 1,615 mile trip back to my home in the Los Angeles area. I decided to do the trip over three days with overnight stops in Fort Morgan, CO and Richfield, UT. Driving distances each day are:

• Day 1: 556 miles
• Day 2: 547 miles
• Day 3: 512 miles

Those distances make for an easy drive on each of the three days and allow me to plan my drive through the Denver, Las Vegas and Los Angeles areas outside of rush hour.

Between now and Wednesday morning, the only items left on my agenda are washing dirty clothes and taking a quick trip to Holstein, IA to see my uncle and visit The Blue Eagle, a bar I haven’t been in since my grandfather passed away 26 years ago.

I’m also hoping to get to a car wash at some point on Tuesday to blast off some of the Nebraska mud that has accumulated on the car. Dad lives off of a gravel road in Dakota County, NE that isn’t maintained especially well and it’s rained quite a bit since I’ve been here. ‘Nough said.

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