Saturday, May 10

Travel Oddities

I don't know what it is with me and traveling, but odd things just seem to happen to me whilst journeying different places. Here are just a few highlights of the interesting things that have happened to me on trips:

Scenario 1: While traveling to Paul and Petra's wedding last summer, some random 18-wheeler began honking at me. I tried to figure out if I was doing anything wrong to upset him, but could not figure it out. He continued honking. When we stopped at a red light, he happened to end up next to me, and he began waving frantically and rolled down his window. Somewhat confused, but ultimately more curious, I too rolled down my window. He then asked me if I had represented him in court, to which I replied, "No, I'm pretty sure I haven't ever met you."
His answer was, "Oh, I saw your license plate for pre-paid legal and I thought you were the lawyer who represented me once." (Gee thanks, Dad...)
"Nope, I'm definitely not a lawyer. My dad used to sell pre-paid legal as an associate."
We waved, the light turned green, and we were off.

Scenario 2: On one trip home from Southern, I was rolling along on my merry way when all of a sudden some mud spattered on my windshield.
"Ugh, that's gross." I thought as I tried to wash it off with the windshield washer fluid.
More mud kept flying back, and for whatever reason, it wasn't really coming off no matter how furiously my wipers flew back and forth.
"Man, it must be coming from that truck up there. You know... I don't think that's mud."
It was at this point that I realized that the 18-wheeler in front of me was actually spitting oil on my windshield and not mud. Bah!
So on I rode with a slimy oil film on my windshield.

Scenario 3: I just came home this weekend to surprise my mother for Mother's Day. While riding home, I saw some very interesting signs and other things. I had to take a detour route because of the work that they're doing on I-40. Once I made it past the detour and back onto the road, I thought it odd that I still saw signs that said "I-40 Detour." However, what was even more odd was the fact that on top of those signs there were little orange signs that said "Wide load." I'm still not sure of the significance of those signs...
Even better than the little detour signs was a truck that I saw. It looked like your average silver, gas-toting 18-wheeler, except for one thing. When I first saw this, I did a double take and made sure that I had read the back of the truck correctly. I think I must have read it four times before I was certain that I had not made a mistake. On the back of the truck were large black letters that read "INEDIBLE." I kid you not. I'm not sure why it said inedible; perhaps it's one of those, we-got-sued-because-we-didn't-include-the-most -ridiculous-warning-on-our-product kind of things. Or maybe someone has a sense of humor. In any case, I was rather amused.

I have quite the repertoire of stories similar to the ones here, but I figured that this small sampling would be amusing enough for one post. Hope you enjoyed :)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow those are good stories! I need to travel with you to get some fun stories!
BTW you look super HOT in that dress!!! well talk to you later. amber
PS: I talked to Paul and Petra and also got to meet with them this weekend and it looking good for me to go. So we will see how God leads!

Christy Joy said...

haha, and i've had the privilege of experiencing quite a number of your travel oddities with you :) lol

Alex said...

When you saw the oil coming from the 18 wheeler you should have honked at him 'till he stopped - he probably would have been very appreciative as you could have saved him the $20,000+ for a new engine.

Kristin said...

Amber: I'm hopeful that we'll get some fun travel stories from Africa or France ;)

Christy: Yes you have... but we won't mention that one story :P

Alex: You're probably right. Unfortunately I didn't have the presence of mind to do so...