Many of you know I’m a little hard of hearing. Not unusual for elderly gentlemen, but I’ve been that way for quite a while. My doctor told me to check into a hearing aid when I got to the point where it was causing a problem, but then I’d be able to hear everything Jean said and my built in excuse would be gone, so I haven’t done a thing about it.

I guess my hearing isn’t quite as bad as I’d like it to be. My flight for Florida by way of Detroit left Tuesday at around 5 PM. We were held on the ground in Grand Rapids for about 15 minutes before we got clearance to take off. During the flight we circled the Detroit airport about 15 minutes before we could land. From the time the plane door closed until it opened in Detroit, a young child directly behind me screamed non-stop and I heard every bit of it. I also heard, much to my dismay, his mother say at least two hundred times “Let’s go. We’re going to go now.” If it was an attempt to get the kid to stop crying she should think up something new ‘cuz it didn’t work.

If that wasn’t enough, I stayed in a motel about 35 miles South of Nashville (Tennessee, not MIchigan) on the way back. The exit I stopped at had four hotels. One was a Sleep Cheap motel attached to a truck stop and it looked like it rented rooms by the hour, so I passed on that one. The other three were across the street. On one side was a Holiday Inn Express and on the other side was a Clarion with an indoor pool and jacuzzi. In between was an “America’s Best”. I can’t stand to spend $100 a night just to sleep, get up at 5 AM and take off, so I chose the America’s Best for $57.

I should have known that if you call it “Best” it probably isn’t and I was right. There was no clock, the TV was the smallest one you can get and the remote had no numbers on it, so if you wanted to go from channel 3 to channel 50, it took 47 clicks on the plus button. The furniture was cheap, there was no shampoo, and when I showered and dried off, the towel felt like a burlap bag. The heater made a really loud noise when it came on so I turned the heat off. But it was clean and adequate until 3 AM Central Time, 4 AM Eastern. I woke up feeling the call to nature. When I got back in bed I could hear the people in the rooms on both sides of me snoring…loud…in unison.

Yesterday afternoon, somehwere in Indiana, I stopped at a McDonalds for another home cooked meal, my last one on the road. It got really busy so they started cooking several batches of fries. When they dropped them into the grease a beeper started and didn’t stop until they took the basket out. It must be a safety thing. Since they made one batch right after another the beeping continued from the minute I walked in ’til the minute I walked out twenty minutes later.

WHERE”S THE HARD OF HEARING WHEN YOU REALLY NEED IT?

I drove a rental truck full of furniture back to move into the condo. I haven’t driven a truck like that in several years and it takes a little getting used to. Being the accounting geek that I am, I can usually figure out where on the trip I’ll be and when within 30 minutes, give or take. Not so this time. Driving a truck is different than a car. I’d stay in the right hand lane a lot since I was going 5 m.p.h slower than most cars. When I got behind a really slow one, I realized you don’t just “dart” out and make a quick pass. So there I’d be as a parade of cars from behind passed us both.

The Florida trip usually takes between 19 and 20 hours depending on traffic, weather and which route I take. That’s start to finish time and includes gas, meal and bathroom stops. This time it took me 25 hours and I felt every mile of it. My rear end feels likes it’s flattened to twice its normal size, which is big enough as it is. It’s boring riding alone so I’ll do anything for entertainment. Since you have a bird’s eye view, you can see what’s going on in cars when people pass you.

Yesterday I was going through snow…not exactly a white-out, but snowing quite hard and the wind was blowing about 25 m.p.h. at least. I had to fight to hold the truck on the road. I saw a guy passing me with his car packed to the roof with clothes and other junk and he was reading a map. Apparently it’s easier to drive a car in a blizzard than a truck. Now I know why I went to college to study accounting. The idyllic thought of truckers leading an exciting life immortalized in “trucker songs” is blown way out of proportion. It’s hard, it’s monotonous, and it’s dangerous with all the crappy drivers out there.

Just (Roll On Eighteen Wheeler, Roll On) Jack