Driving Under Water – An Ode to Military Humor

If you have read a few of my recent posts, you know that I have written about my family’s departure from Hawaii on our way to Tacoma en route to North Dakota and the East Coast.  I was ultimately headed to the East Coast to Fort Lee, Virginia to attend the Logistics Executive Development Course.  The stops in Tacoma and North Dakota were to visit relatives.  Oh yeah, the stop in North Dakota was also to retrieve my red Chevy van.  You may have read my post about the really rough landing that my luggage experienced.  To be brutally honest, my luggage was beat to hell.  My luggage looked like it had been beaten by a bunch of gangbangers with chains and clubs to within an inch of its life.  Well, after I settled all of the claims for my lost, damaged, and destroyed luggage with the airline and the Army, my family and I relaxed and enjoyed some vacation time with our relatives.  The last thing on the agenda while we were in Tacoma was to celebrate my son’s birthday.  After we had celebrated my son’s birthday and visited all of our friends and relatives that would see us and visit with us, we decided it was time to head for North Dakota.  We got to North Dakota without a hitch or an itch for that matter.  But there were a few hiccups.  For example, my brother Jethro was supposed to show up to pick my family and I up at the airport.  Well, that didn’t happen.  Then, my brother Ron picked my family and I up and we stayed at his house for a couple of days.  We went to the county fair where I got trapped on the zipper with my niece.  Yay.  Then we went to my parents’ house to pick up my red Chevy van so that we could travel to Minneapolis and on to Fort Lee, Virginia.  Of course, we couldn’t leave my parents’ house without first hauling off some of their unwanted trash. Hauling off other people’s trash is always a nice experience.  Well, we got to my brother Craig’s house in Champlin, Minnesota, and he took us to a Minnesota Twinkies (Minnesota Twins) game.  Of course, he took us early enough just so that we could sit and watch an eighty-year-old spinster behind us catch all of the fly balls that were batted our way.  I swear, that spinster was communicating with somebody in the batting cage.  It was a conspiracy I tell you.  The whole thing was rigged.  Well the next day, my family and I set off for parts east, mainly Virginia, in our red Chevy van.  About a half an hour after we left the Twin Cities, it started to rain cats and dogs.  No.  It didn’t really rain cats and dogs.  There weren’t any cats and dogs falling from the sky.  Although, that would have been pretty humorous, although rather treacherous at the same time.  Could you imagine if a cat or a dog hit your windshield at just the right velocity and angle?  Why, it would smash that windshield all to smithereens.  What are smithereens, you ask?  Well, that is a damn good question.  Google defines smithereens as small broken pieces or fragments.  I guess you could call them little itsy-bitsy pieces.  Now, in the case of our windshield that would be little itsy-bitsy pieces of glass all over the got-damn place.  Except, hold on for a minute.  Windshields are made of safety glass which means that they have this little embedded strip of plastic in between the layers of glass so that the windshield doesn’t shatter into itsy-bitsy pieces.  So really, it would just crack into smithereens.  That end effect is that you still wouldn’t be able to see shit out of the damn windshield.  But raining cats and dogs just means that it is raining pretty got-damn hard (for the younger readers out there).  Now, add to that fact that there was water pooling and standing on the interstate at least two or three inches deep in certain areas.  As a result, whenever a big-rig truck or any other vehicle for that matter zipped by you in the other lane, that vehicle would sling buckets of water up on your windshield so that your windshield wipers would be deluged by a flood of water.  The resulting effect was that it seemed like we were constantly driving underwater.  I couldn’t see shit.  I had to slow way-down and I was losing time.  I lucked out and came upon a truck stop in Wisconsin.  I pulled into the truck stop and waited for a break in the storm.  I went inside the gas station and bought three bottles of the magic windshield formula “Rain-X.”  I also bought a batch of mechanic’s oil changing rags.  During a break in the rain, I dumped a liberal amount of the first bottle of Rain-X on my windshield, side windows, and mirrors and I waited for the stuff to dry.  After the Rain-X dried to a haze, I buffed it off with a rag.  Then I used another rag to wipe the windshield, the windows, and the mirrors again.  After that, I applied a second coat of Rain-X to the windshield, the side windows, and the mirrors and waited for the stuff to dry.  After I was finished buffing the windows, I locked up the van and went into the diner attached to the gas station to round up my family.  Soon we were back on the road.  It continued to rain as we continued east, but it didn’t matter now that I had applied the Rain-X to my windows.  The water just beaded up and ran off as fast as it hit the windshield and the windows.  I had crystal-clear vision.  There were times when I was still deluged by water when I was passed by other vehicles.  At those times, it still seemed that I was driving underwater.  To solve the problem, I caught up to a convoy of truckers and asked them if I could ride their rocking chair. Now if you’re wondering what riding in a trucker’s rocking chair is, it is when you are in a line of big rigs in between two other big rigs, so one in front of you and one behind you, giving you a buffer from the rest of traffic.  After they gave me the go-ahead to slip into their rocking chair, we drove clean and green all the way through Illinois and Indiana until I had to stop for gas.  We finally stopped for the day in South Bend, Indiana.  We pulled into a rest area outside of South Bend, where my wife prepared and served the evening meal for our family.  Then we found lodging accommodations for the evening.  We arrived at our stop along the way without experiencing any other significant exercises in futility.

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