Brothers Ralph, ‘Pooch’, ‘Chubby’, ‘Butch’, and ‘Tiny’ are Tavares, and the’re a long-running R & B and Disco act from New Bedford Mass. They achieved their greatest mainstream chart success during the mid-1970s at the peak of the Disco era, but they’ve been performing together as a group for 50 years !
This was their biggest selling hit to date – and their only gold-certified single. It’s their # 1 Disco smash “Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel”:
– It’s time for my favourite blog entry of the week.
– That’s because there’s no planning for it.
– It just happens.
– I just do it.
– This afternoon on my drive home from work cops were pulling over people.
– There were 3 cop cars with lights on at 3 separate locations within 3 miles.
– That’s triple the overall average of 0 cop cars !
– One vehicle driving directly behind me was pulled over by a cop.
– I dig that !
– When I see a cop I continue driving as normal while others slam their brakes.
– That’s because I’m a safe and law-abiding driver – unlike most people I know.
– It’s why I’m alive today after my recent trek to North Texas and back.
– 8 out of every 10 vehicles on the road pass me.
– Does anyone know of a good Real Estate attorney here in Homestead ?
– I need one next week.
– I own a 2ND home now, and I need to get everything transferred over.
– NO – I’m not moving away from Homestead !
– My parents gave me their former home up in the Jacksonville area.
– I just need to start paying for it now.
– My Credit Union is going to love me when they find out about this.
– There is no cold air in sight even though it’s December.
– This is an El Niño winter, so that means an abnormally wet winter.
– El Niño winters can produce double, triple, and even more the normal rain.
– It can also get cold for extended periods of time (several weeks).
– That usually happens later in the season.
– It should be an exciting winter season weatherwise.
– The murder of an unborn baby is absolutely despicable.
– Yet it is so unbelievably acceptable.
– Just 18 days following conception that heart is beating.
– Brain waves follow soon after.
– Tens of millions of human lives have been murdered since Roe V. Wade.
– That sounds like a Holocaust to me.
– Pro-Choice = Pro-Death
– I was once a firm believer in the death penalty.
– I no longer support it.
– It’s been a gradual change in thinking for me over the past 40 months.
– I don’t believe that anyone has a right to kill anyone else – no matter what.
– The One who creates the Life must be The One who ends the Life.
– That can only be God.
One of the most played songs on the radio during my recent 2,764.7 mile trek halfway across the continent and back was the brand new pop smash from Toby Mac – “City On Our Knees”. When I heard it for the first time on WAY-FM a couple of weeks ago it was an instant classic as far as I was concerned.
It’s in the lyrics:
If you gotta start somewhere why not here
If you gotta start sometime why not now
If we gotta start somewhere I say here
If we gotta start sometime I say now
Through the fog there is hope in the distance
From cathedrals to third world missions
Love will fall to the earth like a crashing wave
Tonight’s the night
For the sinners and the saints
Two worlds collide in a beautiful display
It’s all love tonight
When we step across the line
We can sail across the sea
To a city with one King
A city on our knees
A city on our knees
Beautiful words there from T-Mac. There’s only one Great King of this world that we live in, and He created it all. We are simply temporary visitors and users of His great creations. Can you imagine how great this world would be if every single last one of us joined forces in unison and gave it all up for God. If we all praised and worshipped Jesus Christ forever. If we all loved each other forever. If God’s Kingdom expanded to encompass the entire world. We are truly a mere one choice from together. Let us step across the line.
You can hear the song with its lyrics in its entirety here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFL2NDxF-CA
It’s time for the informal debriefing of my recent long road trip. Let’s roll:
1. First I’ve got some raw stats – 1,381.3 miles going from Homestead Florida to Allen Texas – and an unbelievably close 1,383.4 miles going from Allen Texas to Homestead Florida. That’s a difference of only 2.1 miles – or a mere 0.15%. That’s ridiculously close for both legs of the longest road trip of my lifetime. Here’s another crazy fact. I drove 0.0 miles from the moment that I arrived in Allen Texas on a Saturday afternoon until the moment that I departed the following Saturday morning. I meant to drive around and explore the local area, but I never got around to doing so. My brother drove us everywhere that we went, and I was happy with that. He has far more experience driving amongst the crazy North Texas drivers. He is one !
2. I generally drive an overall average of about 21 miles per day – or close to 7,750 miles per year. (It’s great to live and work within 7½ miles of each other.) I amassed a grand total of 2,764.7 miles on this road trip from start to finish – or about 132 days worth of driving (nearly 4½ months) in a mere 4 days (2 days over and 2 days back). My car’s already due for its next routine 3-month preventive maintenance just a little more than 3 weeks after its last one !
3. There were a lot of horrifying traffic experiences along the way to (and especially) returning back from Texas. It was truly a miracle from up above over and over again that I did not get hit by any other vehicles big and small by all of the various crazy lunatic drivers that were all around me. I knew that I was driving some busy highways on the busiest travel days of the year, but I always thought that the airports were busy more so than the highways. This past Sunday I-75 from I-10 to Florida’s Turnpike was so thick and congested that traffic occasionally came to a grinding halt at times – 0 MPH. The same was true over much of the entire length of Florida’s Turnpike all the way down to the Broward / Miami-Dade County line. Ironically the Miami-Dade County portion of the Turnpike southbound was the most peaceful portion of my trek as I hit the final home stretch en route to my home sweet Homestead.
4. One horrific moment that’s still rather clear in my mind occurred high atop the mighty Mississippi River Bridge on I-10 on the eastbound approach into Baton Rouge Louisiana. It is apparently the highest bridge over the entire length of the river, and I believe it ! I was in the middle lane which came to a grinding halt (due to thick heavy traffic at the time); however, both of the other lanes were still moving slowly. As I was stuck in my middle lane for what seemed like forever at the time (but was surely for less than a minute) I could actually feel the bridge sway back-and-forth with the movement of the other vehicles. This frightened me to bits and pieces, and I decided that the best thing to do at that precise point in time and space was to grip my steering wheel harder than I ever had previously. I suppose that during that short ordeal it made me feel just a little bit more secure (for no logical reason whatsoever).
5. Would I do it all over again ? Of course I would ! Before I embarked on this longest road trip ever I figured that once I got this out of my system that I wouldn’t want to do it again. That was then, but this is now. I want to do it again. I may plan my travel days a bit differently next time so as to minimize the horrific traffic experiences along the way. I really enjoyed the freedom of being able to take whatever I felt like taking on this road trip without any of the various space, weight, and security limitations that exist via flying. I made light of some of the horrific traffic experiences along the way, but there were plenty of peaceful, quiet, and uneventful stretches of this road trip as well. Those experiences made it all worth it, and I’m looking forward to doing it all over again – perhaps as soon as 5 months from now !
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