And that includes pot!

My old pickup truck, yeah, you know, the one that I drove all of the way to Indiana and back in recently? Yeah, that one. Well, it's gone over 200,000 miles and so I figured that I better spend some money on preventative maintenance before she up and quits on me somewhere inconvenient. I had a week when I had no service calls planned, and so I put it in the shop for a tune-up. I also had the water pump, belt, front main seal, and all of the shocks replaced. While they were working on it, they also discovered that both of the linkages for the sway bar (associated with the steering and suspension) were broken, and so I had that repaired as well.

While I had had no service calls planned when I put my truck in the shop, an urgent request had come up the very next morning from the University of Houston, and so when I picked up my truck, I immediately headed south-east in it. Not two hours after I had had all of that suspension work done, some idiot pulled out directly in front of me while I was doing 70 MPH. I saw him waiting on a side road to cross the highway but I didn't think too much about it until he waited until I was only 50 or so yards from him and then pulled out directly in front of me. Needless to say I laid on the horn and stood on the brakes. For just a moment, the whole world seemed to slow down. . .
I guess that he must have heard the horn and realized that we were both about to die, but he then panicked and stopped directly in front of me! Now he was completely blocking the left lane that I was doing 70 MPH in. I know that this sounds like bullshit, but during times like this, you really do seem to think faster than normal. I actually recall considering my options and I figured that they were seriously limited. Stay in my lane and T-bone his car at near 70 MPH, or take to the grass divider that separates the east and west lanes of the highway. I didn't have time to see if there were drainage ditches, concrete culverts, signs, or posts, I just knew that my options were to definitely be in the hospital that afternoon, or to take to the center divider and hope like hell that it worked out for the best.

I’m pretty sure that my truck briefly left the ground as I pulled the wheel to the side and left the pavement. Much to my great relief, I had missed the concrete drain that ran under the crossroad, and so now my only problem was that I was still doing somewhere around 50 MPH, but now it was on slippery grass and headed directly for the oncoming traffic. Yeah, all of those years when I was young and dumb and used to love driving my car sideways in the dirt paid off that moment . . .

I eventually came to a stop in the left lane of the oncoming traffic on the other side of the highway with dust and grass billowing all around me. I had just enough presence of mind to pull my truck out of the traffic lane and onto the shoulder, and then I just sat there on the wrong side of the road, facing the wrong direction, for about five minutes with my leg shaking so bad I couldn't use the clutch. Finally, I got myself pulled together and got out and started a walk around my truck to see what damage had been caused. I was worried that I might have actually hit the car because it had happened so fast, and the drive through the medium was so rough, I honestly wasn't sure at that point. Speaking of the other car, I spun around to see if they were all right, but apparently he figured his job of trying to kill people was complete, and he had taken off without so much as an apology.

I was pulling clumps of grass out of my grill and my bumpers when a beautiful young woman came walking up to me and told me that she had seen the whole thing, and that the police were on the way.
"Oh my God, I can't believe you made it! Are you ok?!" She asked, a bit out of breath from her fast walk through the heat to get to me. I shakily assured her that I was pretty sure that I was fine, so she walked around my truck with me as I inspected it for damage.
"Either you are very lucky, or a very good driver!" She exclaimed. "I kept waiting for your truck to flip over! At that speed it wouldn't have taken much!"
I started laughing, probably as much from shock as anything else.
"Yeah, that was the benefit of a misspent youth of hot rodding cars down dirt roads!"

After I had finished giving my report to the police, the young ladies parting words to me as I was pulling out:
"You watch, your life is going to be different from here out. God saved you for a reason. . . "

So I got to thinking about this a few days later. When I was in my twenties, I got into lots of trouble doing stupid shit with cars, some of it fairly serious trouble at that, but the skills that I had learned and honed at that stage of my life had saved my life, and the lives of others, on multiple occasions in the years since. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating doing reckless and stupid things in your car because the skills might pay off, but I do think that maybe I won't devote so much time to giving myself hell for the stupid things that I did in my past. I might well have been dead by now if it weren't for the skills that my stupidity has taught me.

The other thing that struck me, was to wonder if I hadn't saved my own life by having the truck serviced right before this drive? Would the truck have dealt so well with hitting the center divider at such a high rate of speed if the broken sway bar hadn't been found and fixed, and if the shocks hadn’t just been replaced?

Things that make you wonder.

So, now that my son is no longer stationed there, I suddenly have a service call to the Bremerton Wa area. I had had no idea that we had any customers in that area and so I was more than a little surprised when I got the call. I’ve gotta admit that I was kind of irritated too. This would have been awesome if it had occurred when my son and his family were stationed there, but I guess that's the way the ball bounces.

The day started off with the parking shuttle bus driver calling me "sir", then quickly apologizing and saying "ma'am". I just kind of laughed and told him not to worry about it, that I get that quite a lot. What the hell, clearly I’m confused about my gender so why shouldn't he be? Funny thing, I actually felt pretty all day but kept getting called sir anyway. Usually my “passing” improves when I feel good about myself, but not so much this day. With this being the West coast, I still had lots of people start up conversations with me, even though I apparently wasn’t passing in the least little bit.

Checking into the hotel, I had to kind of laugh as the young lady behind the counter informed me that there is no smoking in the hotel.

“And that includes smoking pot!” she added with a grin. I just kind of looked at her for a second.

“You really have to specifically tell people that around here?” I asked her.

“Sure! Pot is legal here, but some people seem to forget that ‘no smoking’ means pot too.”

“Yeah, I’m cool with it being legal and all, but I still can’t risk it myself. I’ve had to take too many drug tests for customers through the years and it might cost me my job.”

“I don’t use it either.” She assured me with a wink as she handed me my keys. Personally, I think she fibbed. . .

When it came time to head back home, I stopped into the hotels dining area to grab a cup of coffee for the hour and a half drive to the Seattle Tacoma airport. As I stood there putting sugar and cream into my cup, a gentleman about my own age stepped up beside me, grabbed a coffee cup, and started a conversation with me.

“How are you this morning?” he asked.

“I’m well thank you. How about yourself?”

“I’m doing pretty good. Just enjoying the beautiful weather here!”

“I know what you mean. It’s awesome here, isn’t it?” I agreed.

“It is! The sunshine is great! I came from Indiana, and it seems like it’s been raining non-stop there. Everyone talks about how it rains all of the time here, but I had to come all of the way to Washington just to get some sunshine.”

We both laughed about that for a moment.

“I hear you.” I told him. “I just left Indiana a few weeks ago myself after spending nine months there, and I’d have to agree with you – it seems like it rained the entire time that I was there.”

“Really? Where were you working while you were there?”

“I was down in Columbus working at Cummins.”

“I’ve done some work down there too.” He said.

“I’ll bet it was with Cummins.” I laughed. “That’s about all there is there I think.”

“No,” he disagreed. “I’ve done some work with Crane in that area.”

I don’t recall the name of the town, but he told me that he had been working at the US Navy’s largest US base that is apparently located in Indiana. I just looked at him for a second.

“You’re kidding right?” I asked. “You’re telling me that the Navy’s largest base is in Indiana?!”

“Yep, in the middle of a completely land locked state.” He assured me. “I think it used to be an Army base before the Navy took it over.”

“Well,” he said, kind of softly as we started to go our own ways, “you have a great day!”

I think that I am going to miss the west coast . Nice people there.

On the flight to Minneapolis where I was to catch my connecting flight, one of the flight attendants decided to totally out me. He was walking down the aisle with a PDA telling everyone what their connecting gates were. He got to my row.

“Huddle?” he asks everyone in my row. I raised my hand to identify myself.

“Matthew Huddle?!” he asked, looking confused.

I continued to hold my hand up and started to wiggle my fingers to once again confirm, yes, that is me! The young man sitting next to me did an honest to God double take, looking at me, looking away, and then quickly looking back when I confirmed that my name was indeed “Matthew”. I bullshit you not, he visibly tried to move just a little further away from me in his seat. Well there is a mixed blessing. Here I’d been sure that I was not passing, but the way the young man next to me almost jumped when the flight attendant outted me, it was pretty obvious that he had had no idea. Talk about good news / bad news. For the record, Matthew Huddles gate was G12  . . .

No, I am NOT taking off my skirt!

So I bought a new skirt while I was in Indiana. It's a cute black skirt with little metallic plastic rings all over the front of it. It actually did occur to me as I was buying it that the back scatter machines at the airport would probably have a stroke with it and flag each ring as an "anomaly" requiring further attention. The thing is, most of the time I get to use the TSA pre-check line these days and get to just walk through the good old fashioned metal detector, and I figured that since the rings were plastic, it wouldn't matter.

I was wrong. 

 

Before heading through the metal detector, I took off my heels, because they will almost always set off the metal detector, and then I stepped through. I thought that I'd made it as it took the machine a moment, but it did eventually alarm and I was asked to step back out.
The TSA inspector took one look at my skirt and said "Yeah, it's probably the rings."  He continued to look me over and then continued "You might try taking off . . ." And here he hesitated so I chimed in and interrupted him.
"Uh no, I am not taking off the skirt!" I told him with a laugh. He laughed, and then started over.
"You might try taking off your bracelet." He completed his statement with a grin. "Or you could just step into the scanner and then get a pat down."

Ok, so I stepped into the damn back scatter scanner and then joined the TSA inspector running that machine in a good laugh as it flagged my entire skirt for further inspection. So yeah, I had the pleasure of a rather intimate pat down by a female TSA agent. 

I have to wonder about all of the stories that I hear about people being mistreated by the TSA because I've never really had a problem. Yeah, I got pulled aside for the dreaded "pat down", but they were very professional and the woman that performed the inspection was very thoughtful and concerned that I be aware of everything that she was going to do, and that I was all right with it. So yeah, an annoyance, but an understandable and minor one at most. I've always been polite to them, and they have always been polite to me.

It kind of pisses me off about the skirt though, because I like it but I don't want to go through that song and dance every time that I fly, so it probably won't get worn often.

Breakfast is from 10 Am to 6 AM

Yawn. As usual, I had to be up at oh dark thirty. For those of you that were never in the Army, that means Damn Early. It’s about 5 AM in the morning and I am in the downstairs bathroom putting on my makeup when I hear someone coming down the stairs. Most of my family knows all about me (except my youngest son) but I am still not eager to have them see me, and so I was a bit nervous as I peeked out the door to see my wife headed down the  stairs.
“What, are you crazy?” I asked her teasingly.

“Nah, I just couldn’t sleep.” She replied in a tired voice, and then made her way to the coffee pot. I thought about tossing in the towel and cleaning the makeup off, but I had most of it done, and I had an entire day to spend in airports ahead of me – I didn’t want to spend it all regretting a lost opportunity to be me for a bit, and so I carried on. Besides, I'd shaved my legs and painted my damn nails for this! 

When I was ready to go, and had my back pack on and my hand on my suitecase, we gave each other a brief kiss good bye. My wife is Five foot and two inches tall, and in heels I have to be about six foot, two or three, so I kind of giggled at how far down I had to bend to reach her.

“You’re kind of short you know? I’d ask you how I look but I’m afraid that you would give an honest opinion.” I told her with a grin. Yeah, that would have been her big chance to say something either uplifting or crushingly depressing, but all I got was the sound of crickets outside of the waiting door. Well, she didn’t say anything to make me crash and burn, so I guess I’ll take what I can get . . .

Having my face fried a few weeks ago (laser hair removal) has helped a bit and the damn beard shadow wasn’t as prominent, and so my confidence is perhaps a little higher. Not high, mind you, just higher than it was. I guess the improved attitude showed because I found people willing to engage with me in conversation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure they knew full well what I am, but when you exude contentedness instead of anxiety, people are a lot more inclined to strike up a conversation with you. I was sitting in the gate area of the Austin airport waiting for my flight to Chicago, when a family came and sat down across from me. The husband was looking a little frazzled as he spoke to his wife.

“Our flight has been delayed by about an hour. That’s not too bad.” He told her.

Of course I almost panicked, because I only had 50 minutes to catch my connection as it was, so an hour delay meant I was 100% sure to miss my connecting flight. I guess my panic was obvious as I frantically looked at the monitor above the gate, because the young man started laughing.

“No no, you’re all right. We are on that flight over there – not yours!” he said, while pointing at the gate next to mine.

I started laughing with relief.

“It was that obvious huh? I only have 50 minutes to catch my connection, so you scared the hell outta me!”

OK, speaking of only having 50 minutes to catch your connection (which by the time my flight landed turned out to actually be 35 minutes) if I ever wear four inch heels to Chicago O’Hair with such a short connection time again, would someone please slap the shit outta me? I looked up a map of the airport later and discovered that you just about literally could not have placed my landing and departing planes farther from each other and still remained within the confines of the airport. That was a LONG walk to make quickly in any shoes, let alone four or five inch stilettos.

By the time I got to my connecting flight, I was “perspiring” (a kind way of saying sweating like mad) and I probably smelled like a goat. None the less, the woman sitting next to me on the plane took the time to tell me that she thought my shoes were awesome. I’m pretty sure that was female speak for “Are you fucking crazy wearing those to the airport?”

At long last, I arrived in Indianapolis where I got my rental car and made the hour drive south to my hotel. I was checked in by a super cute young lady who had almost certainly never encountered anyone like me before. She was awesome, but clearly a nervous wreck. Among other signs that she was nervous . . .

“OK, we have breakfast every morning from 10 Am to 6 AM . . . “ she started off. I just looked at her for a second with my head cocked slightly to the side to show her that something didn’t compute.

“Oh! I mean from 6 AM to 10 AM!” she corrected herself with a nervous giggle.

“It’s OK,” I told her with a wink and then batted my eyes, “I have that effect on people sometimes. . . “

I suck at it, but I’d rather leave them with a giggle than to leave them nervous.