The outward trip came a little closer, however. It was a glorious Friday afternoon and only my third road trip in the "new" VW, I was rarin' to crack open a can of Fahrvergnügen. But except for one very brief stretch of one of the nicest highways you could ask for, I spent most of the trip trapped behind one slow-poke after another.First there was a "wide load" truck that drove just under the legal limit (ugh!). Then there was a flat-bed carrying a low-slung, irreguarly-shaped cargo covered in a flapping tarp behind a tractor that lost speed on every up-hill grade. The latter finally turned off the highway... two driveways short of the road my parents live on. Aaargh!
But there was one unexpected bright spot. I got to try out my car's passing capability, particularly coming out of the last town before my parents' village that was big enough to have a four-way controlled intersection. As the cars ahead of me took their time accelerating to highway speed, I joyfully zoomed around them. And I laughed to hear my self shouting at the first guy I passed: "Two-point-five liters, beeatch!"
The only other memorable whimsy of the weekend is the suggestion with which my father sent me to bed laughing last night. I had dry, hacking, smoke-related coughing fit as I turned back the bedclothes in the guest room. I heard my father shouting something from the living room, so I opened the bedroom door to ask him to repeat it. He obliged: "Shouldn't you say 'Quote...'?"This is so like my Dad, who follows a belch with "...or words to that effect," who calls the cordless phone a "port-a-potty," and whose explanation of the acronym of the rural oil company "M.F.A." cannot be repeated on a family blog. For the rest of the night, every time I visualized myself excusing a coughing fit with the words "End quote," I broke up laughing... which led to more coughing... ("End quote")... You see what I mean. It took me a long time to get to sleep!
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