el diablo amarillo (sorta)

before i get on topic, pardon while i vent a second…

so, it takes basically an hour to get from casa de m to work, right? and right across the highway is gold’s gym, which is typically the destination of choice pre-work most days (damn, is my life exciting or what?) now, yesterday i leave the house at 6:45, which should, even with ordinary morning traffic, put me at the gym at 8:00, so i can do a fourty-five minute workout and still hit my desk by nine.

but yesterday was not an “ordinary morning traffic” day…

i barrel in and then at the outside of town the road turns into a parking lot. right then the traffic report comes on, and i listen to see what the hell…

”only one wreck to report today, on the outskirts of town…a collision at the intersection of highway 183 and **i smell sex and..** and other than that it should be smooth sailing. joe taylor, sky watch traffic..”

well, for those not from austin, “i smell sex and…” is NOT the name of a street around here. we are not corpus christi – there is no “corn products road”. we have “thrasher lane” and “slaughter lane” (we seem like such a mellow city, though, don’t we?) but what happened was the d.j. hit the wrong button so mid report we hear the song he’s testing to play afterwards…

…can’t bitch. i’ve done it before. and even on the same station, ’cause i used to d.j. there. and the morning guy is a former buddy’s intern. so, i call the station and get him to re-play me the first part of the traffic bit over the phone. turn out the wreck was less than a quarter mile up, so i just sit and wait and reformulate my workout in my head as i do to adjust for the time…

no big deal.

so i get to get back up to highway speed – sixty five – for about three minutes. then WHAM, everything grinds to a halt again (and a ford f150 with “let’s go rodeo” in shoe polish on the back window almost nails me from behind like i was the pretty cousin at his family reunion. not cool) well this one, i figure, is due to the leftover backup from the wreck now trying to shoe horn themselves across the one lane overpass next to the airport. so, i cut over next to the airport on another road, u-turn, and head back only to discover that traffic starts further up and is much, MUCH worse than i thought…

no big deal.

i cut up a road, hang a right, and head into the ghetto. or as some know it, kramer’s old neighborhood on east riverside. i head up, cut right, and take off down a side road only to grind to another major halt and from here i can see the problem – they have the colorado bridge shut down due to another wreck. and traffic isn’t budging at all. so, i flip a bitch, head back up, and cut through kramer’s old hood to the highway.

so now i’m on i35 **finally**. two exits up from where i usually hop on, so traffic is a little slower than i’m used to, but manageable. i look at my clock, and it’s 8:02 am. it has taken me an hour and fifteen minutes to make it HALF way to work. the workout is history, and i end up going into work early.

but you know what really bugged me about the whole thing? the missed exercise? the early work arrival coupled with a STILL bad day? the frustration of traffic in general?

nope – none of that.

the fact that this kind of thing burns gas – and that stuff is turning into liquid gold.

(by the way – that is NOT what the title was referring to, and this is getting a bit long, so i’ll add “sorta” to the title and do “the real deal” later).

but when i filled up on monday, it was $2.09 a gallon, and yesterday i ran all over hell and only saw it below $2.10 once. and where i actually filled up after the notorious h.l.g. and i worked out (you knew i’d get one in eventually) was $2.11.

and oddly enough, i have started a poll. not as obnoxious as my stripper poll, where i asked strippers, “when you’re going down on a guy, and you look up at him and make eye contact, what are you expecting him to say or do at that moment? we all feel obliged to say or do SOMETHING. what is it that would be ideal?”

did i ever publish the answers to that one?

anyway…this one is a simple question, asked to gas station attendants – why is gas going up? the war’s been going on for a while, so that excuse won’t fly. so, why is it going up? asked six of them so far. six different nationalities. all the same answer.

“i don’t know”.

mr. hand would have a field day with that.

so, i’ll keep asking, and now i have to get off to work, so look for updates. and the real “diablo amarillo” bit coming soon to a whore near you!!!