The drive home, am I tired yet?

Back from the big trip..... Or perhaps the trip of last week...  Well anyway I left the Ham Radio show on Saturday afternoon about 4 PM....  I got up and said see you guys next year and walked to the parking lot...

On the road, I drove back over to Indianapolis...  But I wasn't tired, so I caught the I 465 beltway around the South side to I 70...  That road goes back to Terre Haute were I stayed overnight on the way out...   But I wasn't tired.....

So onward to Illinois....  At Effingham I thought about getting a Motel, but didn't see a sign advertising a good rate....  That's all it would have taken, just a little lure to draw me in...  But I really wasn't tired yet...

So I drove on to St Louis...  By now it was becoming dark, and I thought I would catch a room on the West side of town...  I took the Northern bypass of I 270 to 370 and then back to I 70..  Stopped for some gas and my proverbial
Wendy's burger....

By then it was about 9:30 and I was starting to feel the fact that I had been up since 5:30...  Or 6:30 Eastern...  But I was using Central time since I hadn't changed my watch...

I had made it out past highway 61 where it goes North to Hanibal, and all things seemed fine...........  Until they went to heck all at once...

Somewhere West of Wright City the highway came to an immediate stop....   One of those where your mind doesn't compute that all those cars ahead aren't moving and you had better get on the brakes....  And the 4 way flashers so the guy behind doesn't plow into you either....

The nest six miles or so were driven at less than 5 miles per hour....  It took a little more than an hour and a half before we were moving again...   I was talking to my son Chris on the phone, and his wife Melissa looked on the internet, and the road was blocked all the way back into St Peters...

She looked at some tweets on Twitter, and they said a truck was on fire...  At Warrenton....  An when I finally passed the problem, it was quite the fire as the semi trailer was burned until there were holes in the sides of the vehicle...  They had disconnected the truck tractor and pulled it away with a wrecker, so it might have been singed but it wasn't gutted out...  Boy I'd bet that was one scared trucker...

The road surface was also burned and they had caution cones blocking the highway....  We were merged into one lane which was passing on the inside shoulder...  I'm sure that went on for hours....

While talking to Chris, I decided to go on to the Lake home in Lake Ozark...  That was better than trying to get a room at mid night... So I arrived there at 1:30 AM..  By then, I was really tired.... LOL

Shortly after turning South off of the interstate, a cop came charging after me from an overpass on US 54...  He tailed me for several miles, more than likely checking out the License Tag with his office...  I had the speed set exactly on 70, the posted speed limit...  It isn't good to have a little red car...  Ticket me red..

But I wasn't doing anything to give him reason to stop me, so eventually he made a U turn thru the center median...  He was driving one of those new Dodge Chargers that have the half covered headlights.....  And a lot of attitude too... Followed me for ten miles...

And just as I thought I had made it safe and sound in Lake Ozark, I picked up another gendarme...  On the North side of the Lake, I must have attracted this fellow too as he came off of a gravel road and up right behind me....  He followed me onto our lake access road..  I had to be careful to drive exactly 30 as our speed signs are popular to earn bucks for the library...

He followed me like a trailer, until I turned into my driveway..  I'm sure that folks come home from the bars at that time, and he was just assisting me....  Ya, right...

Well anyway I came on into KC on Sunday, and Biscuit was quite happy to see me...  Licking my face and nose when I went over to the grandkids house....

But 6 year old Delaney asked my if I was going to take Biscuit home with me, and began to cry when I explained that that answer was yes.....

Today was a yard mowing day, and all those other jobs that didn't get done last week....... Yuck..........!

Retired Rod