Day One-hundred-and-fifty-six: Last hotel, for a while

Another four state day but in 135 fewer miles with almost 40 of the 565 I did log due to my going around Indianapolis to deliver a Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund flyer to a Whole Foods north of town. I also delivered one to a Whole Foods in St. Louis earlier. Yes, I'm finally in Ohio but couldn't drive on any more.

When I got in my car, just before 8:00 AM CST, I noticed a weird symbol lighted on the dash. I looked in the glove compartment for a Prius manual but finally figured out that it meant a low tire. I stopped at the very next exit, which fortunately had a gas station with an air pump. It cost $0.75 to fill it back to where the light went off and it didn't come back on throughout the day's driving.

The day was overcast all day and started spitting rain the middle of Illinois. This left me driving with my wipers on either intermittent or low continuous the rest of the trip.

I tried drafting behind trucks in Missouri on my way to St. Louis. The first truck turned off. I turned off for a rest area from behind the second one. (Caffeinated tea this morning.) I traded the third one in on a faster truck but gave up on all of it when they all turned in to a weigh station. The last truck I had trouble keeping up with, which may have mitigated the draft effect, if there was one to begin with.

Driving behind trucks for whatever reason has a couple major drawbacks: my visibility as a driver was very limited and I couldn't use cruise control. The truck's speed, regardless of how fast they were going varied constantly.

Just after I made an appointment to have my Prius serviced Friday morning, my "MAINT REQD" dashboard light came on.

I listened to most of the albums on what was Marilyn's iPod in today's drive. I just started going through them in alphabetical order. I tried but couldn't listen to Placido Domingo's "Perhaps Love" album, perhaps because I bought the CD especially for Marilyn as a collection of romantic love songs.

I don't know whether it was a joke or real, but it was cute regardless. St. Clair, Missouri, had two water towers next to each other. One was labeled "COLD" and the other was labeled "HOT."

In St. Louis, my Prius navigation system kept wanting to send me on I-64 to get to the Whole Foods. The only problem was that the road was being completely redone and not open for any cars. I finally got far enough away by going at a right angle to I-64 that the Prius calculated a route that didn't involve it. At least the attempt to find an alternative way took me through an area of quite upscale houses.

As it turned out, just before the Ohio border, there was a gauntlet of billboards. While I first thought the Ohio border occurred just before that line up, after I saw the location of the real border, I realized that it was Ohio that had the greater billboard restrictions and the border Ohio businesses were using Indiana's looser laws to advertise their businesses.

Up until Indiana, the truck and car speed limits were the same on the expressway. (In Texas, they were the same on the country roads as well.) In Indiana, they were just five miles apart, typically 70/65, with the 65 for truly huge trucks. Once in Ohio, the speed limits became 65/55 and for much smaller trucks. Of course, this had the effect of making the right lane a solid wall of trucks that frequently slowed the fast lane down as the somewhat faster trucks would slowly pass the somewhat slower trucks. As a result, I guess I drafted a little more than I really intended. While most of my Life after Layoff thus far has been simply slowing down, it's hard in traffic to avoid hurrying up both in an attempt to avoid slowing down but ultimately only to slow down anyway. I did consciously try to avoid having it affect my mental outlook, but that is an old trap that was too easy to fall into. Deep breathing while driving helped, when I recognized what I was doing.