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March 24, 2006

Boston Trip, Truck Driving, Occam's Razor

I resisted the temptation to measure the bridge in Sagers. Also, a certain friend of mine claims that her father was involved in the original paintings of the Smoot marks. While I have yet to verify the veracity of this claim, he is the right age for it.

Anyways, I suppose I should start from the top. I made my one of my semi-regular excursions to Boston. As always, I visited my wonderful sister whom I hope to convince to start blogging (or at least get an IM name!) at some point. Work sent me up to drive a truck full of furniture back (and I will discuss the truck later on in this post). I figured - excuse to go to Boston, not that I ever really need an excuse to go to Boston.

One thing I've done recently is reconnect with my old friend Alexis (or Lexy now as she is known). She and I went to 2nd and 3rd grade together, after which she moved. We stayed friends for a while, writing in the pre-internet era. But as we became teenagers we fell out of touch. Well - behold the power of myspace. On a whim, I looked her up - found her and popped an e-mail. A quick trade of IM names and now we talk a fair bit again. When I was up, this was the first time I saw her in almost 15 years...

We spent Saturday night catching up, which was great. Talked about a lot, and discovered that no matter how much time and distance had separated us, we were remarkably similar people. I stayed on her sofa bed on Saturday night (I expected a couch with a pillow and instead I got a full-fledged bed with Kitty friends purring around me). In the morning we went to this great diner in Watertown, where I ate a very non-Kosher skillet. Perfect pre-drive food.

After the hearty breakfast, Lexy drove me over to the Penske dealer where I picked up my truck. Having been a roadie in my past life, I know a thing or two about truck quality and insisted upon them. And up they pull with a bigger truck than ordered (for the same price) with but a scant thousand miles on the odometer. A quick set of the mirrors and I was on my way. Or so I thought. The passenger side mirror started flaling wildly in the wind. "Odd" I thought, so I pulled over at a gas station in Dedham and reset it, taping it with scotch tape in the process. Well - the tape held through up to Providence where I picked up the gear. On my departure, I stopped at a truck stop and bought more tape in an effort to resecure the mirror with a slightly better angle. Big mistake. The tape did not hold this time. I finally pulled into a truckstop in Connecticut and asked them to take a look. They locked that sucker down, and I thought "Yes! Resolved!" But it was not to be - sure enough, but a few miles down the road the mirror started swining wildly again. I finally stopped at a gas station in Fairmont, and waited for a Penske road service person to come. Well - as I was waiting, a very McGuyver-esque gas station attendant came over and wrapped the mirror with 40 wraps of packaging tape. It held the rest of the trip, but I still lost a cumulative of 2 hours. I should've just gone back to Waltham when I stopped in Dedham - but I followed in my parents footsteps who also stopped near Dedham when they were moving from Boston to Houston, and didn't turn around when they had car trouble. All in all, though, I still love Penske.

I have the weekend to relax now, which is lovely. My younger sister is in town so we'll go hang out in DC tomorrow night. I had planned to spend a night on my couch with Potato chips and the BBC's Creature Comforts & Little Britain - but one of my friend's has had a rough week and I feel it's my duty to ensure she's thoroughly intoxicated.

Oh - my vanity license plates have arrived. What do they say?

"OCCM RZR"

The simplest car is the best car.

Posted by MikeSager at March 24, 2006 5:30 PM

Comments

Posted by: older sister #2 at March 29, 2006 1:10 AM