Post Retreat

Posted by cokelady

The drive home was just as fun and exciting as the rest of the trip, although the blizzard itself was still the highlight. We left the crowd and headed home at 3:30 or so in the afternoon (I think) and made it home at about 2:30am. I did most of the driving since Tammy has a hard time seeing at night. Old ladies. I tell ya’. Anyway, all went well in my continuing efforts to conquer the manual transmission. Of course, there was the instance when I drove for some time in 3rd gear, thinking I was in 5th. And then the time that I took off from a dead stop in 3rd gear, thinking I was in 1st. I was actually a little proud of that one (seems like it would take special talent to pull that off) until Tammy mentioned something about the clutch smelling hot. Then there was the time I drove for 10 miles with the emergency brake on. The best was probably when we got pulled over by the cop and I was so distracted that I totally forgot I was driving a stick. We got down to about 5 MPH before the car started chugging and snorting and lunging, then threw us into an almost-crack-the-windshield dead stop. I’m sure the cop appreciated the show. I figured he’d probably make me get out and walk the white line or something, but he went easy on me. It was about 2:00 in the morning, I think, and we were way past “normal.” He came to the window and I opened my mouth to begin apologizing for my excessive speed (Tammy’s car doesn’t have cruise control… or much of a clutch or parking break, thanks to me. Hey, what are friends for?!), but he cut me short. “The reason I stopped you, Ma’am, is that you failed to dim your lights.” I just sort of stared at him, my mouth still gaping, prepared to give him the there’s-no-cruise-control-and-we’ve-had-a-long-hard-weekend-and-are-really-sweet-innocent-little-things-who-would-never-hurt-a-flea-and-certainly-couldn’t-deserve-anything-like-an-actual-ticket sob story. I finally managed a very dignified, “What?” He repeated, “I passed you coming the other direction and you failed to dim your headlights.” All I could think to say was “Oh. Sorry!” I was so taken off guard! GOOD GRIEF!!! Failing to dim your headlights?! Who ever heard of such a thing?! I mean, I know supposed to do it, but I’ve never heard of anybody being pulled over for not doing it! Talk about one bored cop. I just kept thinking that somewhere in that county some guy was probably beating his wife or robbing a convenience store or something—and this cop is pulling me over for “failing to dim my lights?!” Pitiful. But I’ll not be too hard on him. He only gave me a warning, so he’s what I’ll refer to as a “friendly cop.” I like that kind.

The only other item of interest on the trip is that Tammy made wait until 1:00 in the morning for dinner, then made me eat Chili Cheese Freetos. That’s right, folks—thanks to her, I had the nourishing and filling meal of Chili Cheese Freetos… for dinner… at 1:00 in the morning. It’s too long of a story to relate (and you probably would have had to have been there anyway), but we’ll just say that I passed up a very tempting and scrumptious smelling chimichunga and ended up with the Freetos—all because Tammy felt “weird.” *big sigh/rolling eyes*

Okay, here are the pictures that I promised!!! It was a truly gorgeous trip. Take a gander…

This entry was posted on 10:50 PM . You can leave a response and follow any responses to this entry through the Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) .