Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Grumpy Summer Vacation, Day 14

While the kids were watching TV this morning, an ad came on for the IHOP bacon & egg cheeseburger. WTF? They can’t advertise cigarettes on TV, but they can push this to kids?

A few minutes later I was showering, and realized I’d left the shampoo bottle out on the counter. I asked Frank to hand it to me, and then lathered up my hair.

But it didn’t lather. It clumped. And the more I rubbed the worse it got. In horror, I realized Frank had given me a bottle of generic hotel hand lotion, which showed no sign of coming out of my hair. I think I used up the hotel’s entire hot water supply and quite a bit of shampoo to de- goopify my receding hairline.

The freeway went through quite a few small towns. A peculiarity you see in Idaho is that every neighborhood has at least one house with a sign up that you can buy jerky there.

Today we drove through Red Rock Pass in Idaho, which is an interesting area.

From roughly 14,000 to 32,000 years ago the immense Lake Bonneville covered large amounts of Utah, Nevada, and Idaho. At some point, roughly 14,500 years ago, this massive lake eroded through a weak spot at Red Rock pass, causing a torrential flood. The flood rate was 15 million cubic feet of water per second, which is 3 times the average flow of the Amazon river today.

It’s oddly strange to stand in this quiet, rocky, area and think of it being under several hundred feet of water, pouring out with terrible force. Today the Great Salt Lake and Bonneville Salt Flats are all that are left of the massive lake.

We stopped for some groceries around noon. The store had a big aisle marked "Mormon Food Storage Supplies". It included rice, beans, wheat, big plastic containers, and (I swear!) A whole row of José Cuervo Margarita mixes. Either this is some new church doctrine, or they need a better stockboy.

Upon returning to our car, we saw this spankin' vehicle, which featured a plastic pigeon nailed to the trunk.





On the way out of town we passed a sandwich place advertising “15-inch footlong subs”. I pointed it out to the kids, and asked what was wrong with it. Frank said it was because they were using the metric system.

On this trip we’ve seen quite a few wind farms. Back home I hear people complaining about them being horrible eyesores, and not wanting them around. I have to tell you, though, that 100 tall wind turbines are a hell of a lot better looking than a single belching smokestack.

We eventually arrived back at my FIL’s house, where he enthusiastically greeted me with a gift-wrapped bag of the horrid jerky I’d tossed earlier in the trip, since he figured I’d enjoyed it so much.

While she and the kids visited with FIL, Mrs. Grumpy sent me to forage for pizza at a Little Caesar’s, which had a sign in front that said “Little Caesar is hot and ready tonight”. Since “Little Caesar” is allegedly the founder’s nickname, I have to wonder if that was one of his college pick-up lines.

While driving back with dinner I was passed by a big Dodge pick-up truck with the license plate “ITSOBIG”.

Only a few more days. I can do this.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did the pickup have trucksticles swinging underneath? Like these: http://www.bullsballs.com/truck/nutz/ no self respecting redneck can go around without them.

The Observer said...

I guess it's easier to read about a Grumpy family vacation than to actually be in the Grumpy family vacation!

Thanks for dragging us all along with you, and safe travels home!

Mugdha said...

Hmm, I always thought the wind farms looked cool. Almost futuristic.

a.generic doc said...

It coulda been worse.

Be happy that when Frank handed you the lotion that you hadn't just been repairing something with superglue!

And Little Ceasar probably came up with his slogan to go up against the old "Piece O' Pizza" chain whose signs read, "Had A Piece Lately?"

Miss Kismet said...

You know what they say - big truck, tiny penis!!!

middle child said...

I love those windmill/pinwheel looking thingies. They are beautiful. But I have to wonder,...are you a bad doctor? Little Caesar's? Really???

Captain Foulenough said...

So much WTF in this photo of a car trunk. The pigeon; the missing "T", leaving the car name as "Come"; and the two things in the center of the trunk lid add to the WTF-ness. One looks like the end of a carriage bolt with a gasket or washer: they've bolted the trunk shut. Something's in there they don't want us to see. The other I can't quite make out...is it a nozzle? A birdbath for the pigeon? A tiny death ray? Damn, we'll never know.

I lived downwind of coal-fired power plants for some years and thus would heartily agree about the wind turbines--I'll take the sleek aesthetics of wind farms over smokestacks, haze and acid rain, thanks.

Anonymous said...

I almost had a lady friend convinced that the windmills on the Altamont Pass were, if fact, large fans which blew air into the San Joaquin Valley to cool it down and blow pollution to Nevada. Since she had already fallen prey to the "braille dots on the highway" farce, it should have been a snap...

The Mother said...

Someday the FTC is going to clamp down on fast food ads. I'm not sure what's the greatest evil: loss of free speech or the obesity problem.

Anonymous said...

Driving down 3rd Street Laramie, Wyoming in the rental SUV on an early Sunday morning, the car in front of me at the stoplight passed over a slightly peturbed pigeon who simply wouldn't move out the way fast enough. I didn't have enough time to slow down, and went over it too. Looking in my rear view mirror, I noticed to my horror (and relief) that the monster Chevy truck behind me gave the pigeon enough clearance to the pigeon so that it was observed, feathers ruffled and seemed a little dazed as it ambled over to a nearby sidewalk.

I hear that folks put up a fuss about installing wind farms in their vicinity because of the low humming sound and the fear of it, but I lived near military bases as a child during the Cold War years and it was either the nearby ocean or the war games. I think the magnificent (almost mysterious) span of large white rotating propellors seems on par with significance (and more useful, too) than Easter Islands or that place in Scotland with the large stones.

Anonymous said...

As a jack Mormon I just knew there was more to the Jose mix story and sure enough it took me two seconds to find a recipe for a cake and frosting recipe that not only is easy to fix up will feed a large group of people. ( Not my words) I am enclosing the link. Like any group, my guess is that it is the latest trend and tastes very good and that all the ladies are making it at all the church functions and that that particular grocery store is the only place that you can find the mix.
As you can tell from the ingredients they are not some things that we would all have in our cabinets but only someone would does food storage or feeds large groups of people on a regular basis would have. http://cooksalliance.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/margarita-cake/

Teri said...

LOVE your blog! It's my pleasure to pass along to you the Versatile Blogger Award. You can get the details and the image to display on your blog at
http://www.puttingourheadstogether.com/2010/07/migraine-versatile-blogger-award.html
.

Congrats!
Teri

Anonymous said...

grumpy- it has been sick fun to watch your mind unravel slowly on this crowded vacation. hurry home. you need it bad.

 
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