Starting next Saturday night and continuing through the remainder of December it’ll be a very ‘Retro’ Christmas with three consecutive Christmas hits in a row from Shakin’ Stevens, Band Aid, and José Feliciano. Be sure to not miss the festivity of that as we celebrate the reason for the season.
This week on the ‘Retro’ I’m flashing back a decade ago to 1999 for some cool European trance music. It’s from German DJ / Producer André Tanneberger – better known to his fans worldwide (including myself) as simply ‘ATB‘. In this 1999 European pop and dance smash featuring female vocalist Yolanda Rivera he simply wants us to keep on going – “Don’t Stop”. This song actually enjoyed later success on South Florida radio via the former PARTY-93.1 during August, September, and October 2002. That’s when I discovered it, and danced to it at the clubs in and around Orlando Florida. “DON’T … STOP“:
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).
Mississippi River Bridge - I-10 - Baton Rouge Louisiana
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 !
– So just because it’s Thanksgiving does NOT mean I don’t have some thoughts.
– Today of all Thursdays I have a special assortment of ‘Mini Thoughts’.
– Most of them involve food.
– Did you expect anything different on this mother of all food days ?
– This morning we went to see “Old Dogs” at a local area movie theatre.
– All of the critics were right – this was one stinker of a movie.
– But I did laugh quite a bit all throughout the flick.
– It won’t win any Oscars, but it was still funny.
– Thanksgiving Dinner was served promptly at 3 PM Central Standard Time.
– It included Honey Ham, Cheesy Potatoes, Sweet Potato Casserole …
– … Broccoli & Cheese Casserole, Spinach, Brussel Sprouts, Croissant Rolls …
– And last but definitely not least – Pumpkin Pie with Cool Whip.
– Our Thanksgiving meal certainly lived up to its reputation.
– I won’t be eating like this again anytime soon.
– Tomorrow is Black Friday – the wildest and craziest shopping day of the year.
– I bet that shoppers are already camped out in the Best Buy parking lot.
– Let the maniacal stampedes begin at 4 AM !
– I’ll be sleeping in as the mass chaos commences at the shopping meccas.
– Later on in the morning we may go for a round of miniature golf.
– I need to redeem myself from what happened last year.
– I just learned that Fuddruckers is on the agenda for Lunch tomorrow.
– I’m a P.C., and Fuddruckers was my idea !
– After Lunch I’ll be packing and getting ready for the return trip back home.
– I’ll begin my long road trip home bright and early on Saturday morning.
– I’ll make it as far as Marianna Florida after about 13½-hours of driving.
– On Sunday I’ll drive the remaining 9 hours or so back to Homestead.
– After that it’s back to work on Monday the 30TH of November.
– I have no further vacations planned until the middle of Feb. (my next cruise).
– ‘Saturday Night Retro’ will be presented on Sunday night after I return home.
– No new blog will be posted on Saturday night.
– Need your Disco fix for this week ?
– Well then stick around because I’ll have that for you tomorrow afternoon.
– Until then have a peaceful and quiet remainder to your Thanksgiving.
1. This morning me and my brother visited a local area (Plano Texas) Walmart, and this particular Walmart was something special. It was brightly lit, sparkling clean, smelled good inside, had fully-stocked aisles of unopened merchandise, had extra wide aisles, and had cheerful and helpful employees working all around. Oh yeah – and the MASSIVE parking lot out front had no active crime scenes. So I guess that not every Walmart is just like the one that’s close to home that I pretty much avoid.
2. Post Walmart me and my brother drove on over to Sonic, America’s Drive-In for an early Lunch. After a few years of watching the very low-budget yet very amusing commercials on television I finally got to experience the culinary delight (in my brother’s car) that is Sonic. They have an extensive menu (including Breakfast), but I selected something very basic – the Bacon Cheeseburger Toaster Combo (with fries and a Sprite). It’s was a rather delicious 1,045 calories (424 of them fat calories). I wish we had Sonic back home in America’s Riviera. Once upon a time (before Hurricane Andrew) we had two of them in the Homestead area alone. I ate there occasionally back in the day. Nowadays in order to eat at Sonic we (South Floridians) have to go north up to The Palm Beaches or north and west over to Naples. It’s just not right !
3. 39°, 40°, and 44° – Those have been the minimum early-morning temperatures thus far since I’ve been here (Sun., Mon., and Tue.). Right now at 2 PM the actual air temperature is 61°, but we’ve got gusty northwesterly winds so wind chills are way down in the low-50s. Next week when it gets much colder here in North Texas I’ll be back home in South Florida basking in 80° warmth and higher humidity again. Bring it on !
4. I asked my brother (who is technologically savvy when it comes to modern cell phone devices) what is the difference between ‘3G’ and ‘4G’, and strangely enough he had no clue. This made me wonder if the average consumer knows what exactly a ‘G’ is. One thing is fairly certain though. My antiquated cell phone from the middle ages (2004) is ‘ZeroG’. But it does just what I want it to do – send and receive text and Twitter messages and the occasional call.
5. This Thanksgiving my family is trying something new and different for our MASSIVE LuDinner meal. We’re going to The HoneyBaked Ham Company to grab a 3-pound boneless ham – sliced and glazed. This will be our first turkey-less Thanksgiving meal that I can ever remember, so perhaps it’ll be the start of a new tradition. My sister-in-law will be making all of the various side dishes that will go along with the tasty ham. I just hope that one of those side dishes is either spinach or collard greens or broccoli. YUM !
Those are my ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. Be sure to check back here later this week for my spontaneous ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’.
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