I left Las Vegas about 7:10 this morning. Made a stop to get some lottery tickets for myself at Rosie's in White Hills, AZ, then drove out of the way 8 miles each way to give Pamela some empty egg cartons.
Was simply going to drop them off and take off for Lexington, KY., but she and I talked for about 45 minutes. Left her house at 9:35 am.
Hit some serious weather near Flagstaff, Arizona, raining so hard I could not see the semi ahead of me until I got about 50 feet away from the truck. Decided to pull off, use the restroom, and wait out the rain.
As soon as I finished, the rain slowed to a sprinkle, so I hit the road again. 3 miles up the road, the torrential downpour hit again. Pulled off again for five minutes, then back at it. I drove about 80 mph once the roads were dry and got precisely 378 miles from my condo when traffic came to a total stop in a construction zone. Suddenly ambulances came flying by on the berm, and a tow truck went the wrong way on the other side of the highway. They had combined four lanes into two with a concrete divider in between the east and west bound lanes.
Two hours later, I shut my engine off...and had to pee so bad I could taste it. It started raining and there was a line of cars and trucks as far both ways as I could see. I got out and walked over to the nearest bush in nearly full view of 1000 cars and trucks, whipped old Luther D out and did my business, thinking an indecent exposure ticket would be less embarrassing than peeing my pants.
A few minutes later the trucker ahead of me got out to smoke, so I got out again to ask if he had any idea what had happened. He said he heard on the cb that it was a horrendous accident, that there was a fatality involved, and that it would be six hours till we got moving.
Well it only took four hours and twenty minutes to reopen both sides of the highway. The car the people who were killed in looked like a kite when it went by us. Shook me up...it hit very close to home for me, as they had to cut Ryan out of our truck when we had our accident in 2005.
Anyway, I am spending the night in Gallup, New Mexico. I should have been in Amarillo by this time. Lexington is 1500 miles from here, give or take a few. Hopefully I can make it there by 7:30 pm Sunday night.
If it becomes apparent I will not make it, I will miss Super Night, which initially totally pissed me off-until I thought how much they folks who were killed had to change their Labor Day plans.
:'(
