Good morning, drivers! Today, your skills will be tested! Now, there’s no ice, and there’s no snow… temps are freakin’ balmy, at 45 degrees or so. I wore flip-flops and shorts to the office this morning, and didn’t even bother with a shirt. Nothing will even come CLOSE to freezing at these temps, and even if ice did immaculately conceive somewhere, it would be obliterated in short order by the warm water.
However, we’ve got fog, wind, rain and rocks. Today’s route took me only as high in elevation as the traffic signal at Lake Gregory Drive X Highway 18. I PRESUME that fog is blanketing the mountain at higher elevations as well, but I can certainly testify as to its presence from that point and down: the Narrows, the four lane, the whole south side of the mountain. And it’s not light, either: it’s moderate, with patches of heavy. If you are not comfortable driving in the fog, today might be a good day to call in blind. Driving in this stuff will require you to keep it slow, and it’ll do so all the way down to Lower Waterman Canyon Road’s exit… damn near to the very bottom of the hill.
We’ve also got some gusty wind and a lot of rain. This is the perfect formula for rocks, rockslides, mudslides, treeslides, houseslides, mountainslides, slideslides and debris of all sorts to hit the road. Sustained precipitation (like we’ve had) goes deep into the soil, turning hard topsoil into soft mud… and when a breeze comes along, it’ll make shrubs and brush wave themselves in the air like they jus’ don’t care. This encourages rocks and debris to wiggle out of place, where gravity takes over and brings it to the nearest horizontal surface. Take heart, though: I saw no fewer than SIX CalTrans rockplows (these are snowplows converted to rock duty by… changing nothing!) patrolling Highway 18. And they are doing a great job of it, too. However, remember that at any moment, new rocks could hit the road. And that’s the rub with the fog: while you MIGHT know every curve and be able to see the painted lines, the unexpected surprise of some gigantic geology in the road will derail your plans to drive at top speed. And you also don’t want to drive at full speed into the rear bumper of some other schlub who is stopped in the road for whatever reason… see yesterday’s Cajon Pass Incident for reasons why that’s not good for anybody.
Oh, and the forecasters say that TODAY is when the rain will really start coming down… apparently, what we’ve seen so far is just the appetizer.
So, shifting gears…
Prohibition went into effect 99 years ago to this day. This sobering act (Officially known as the Volstead Act) went into effect on January 17, 1920, and prohibited the manufacture, sale, transport or importation of alcoholic beverages. Oddly enough, it did not prohibit the consumption or possession of alcohol, although some states took it upon themselves to make possession illegal.
It’s fairly well known that Prohibition was not a success… it was, in fact, repealed in 1933 to the joy of most. However, even during Prohibition, Americans were still thirsty and would try to use things like ethyl alcohol to produce actual drinkable alcohol. The U.S. Government countered by requiring that the manufacturers of this industrial alcohol add poison to the product. Bootleggers then hired chemists and found ways to eliminate the poisons… but the government persisted, requiring manufacturers of the chemicals to add even MORE poisons. Consequently, it is estimated that about 10,000 people died from the consumption of these poisoned alcohols. Now THAT is some crazy stuff.
Today, surely not by random chance, happens to be National Bootleggers Day and National Hot Buttered Rum Day. So it’s pretty much all about the booze today. Drink up… and enjoy the fact that the stuff is not artificially poisoned now. It still might not exactly be the healthiest thing in the world… but with the exercise of a little restraint, it won’t kill you.
How ’bout some trivia: Did you know that Oscar the Grouch started out… ORANGE? Yep… however, before the second season of Sesame Street, creator Jim Henson decided that Oscar should be green. The sudden hue correction was justified by Oscar explaining how he went on vacation in a swamp… and turned green overnight. Done. Green forever. Forever green. Oscar the Green Grouch.
I’m going to the 45 cent concert this weekend. It features 50-Cent and Nickelback. Back in the day, I could see Eddie Money, Quarterflash, Johnny Cash, Johnny Paycheck, The Jacksons, Bread, even the Dead Presidents… but they were pricey. This show: what a deal!
The concert might cost 45 cents, but I know how I’ll cover even that nominal cost. I was recently contacted by an old friend, who had just been thinking a lot about me lately, and really wanted to spend some time reminiscing about the good ol’ days. Oh, no, wait… that was what he SAID at first, but it turns out he just wanted to sell me on Amway. Or Quixtar. Or whatever it’s called today.
See, my loyal friend explained to me that I can save $300 per year, just by buying Amway toothpaste! I did a little math… I probably currently spend about $3 per year on toothpaste… If my lifetime expenditure on toothpaste exceeds $200, then I probably need to stop squirting it into the trash can for fun. Whatever… if I can save $300 every year by getting the Amway stuff, well, that’s a decent check coming my way! Plus, I can save $1,000 per year by getting Amway toilet paper! Another big check coming my way, as I currently spend—MAYBE—$200 per year on the rolls of tissue (for the whole family… and, yes, I know… we need to eat more fiber. Don’t judge). And there’s so much more, too! If I switch over to Amway products, I can apparently save way more each YEAR than I plan to spend in my entire lifetime on certain things. Eye creams, refreshers, multivitamins (sorry: “nutritional enhancements”), sheer lipstick (not just regular lipstick, by Job!), shampoo, laundry detergent, deodorant, mouthwash, baking powder, just about everything that ever came in a box or a bottle or a tube… the savings should just about triple my annual income!
But hell, my loyal friend is SO interested in my welfare, that he’s actually working to make ME a distributor! It’s like I’ve been promoted… already! I’ve never even tried a single product yet, but he feels that I have that lil’ sumthin’ special, that “what it takes,” to become really wealthy by selling the stuff. In fact, he said he doesn’t even really care IF I buy any of the actual stuff, because THAT isn’t what’s important… what IS important is selling it to other people… or even… making THEM into salespeople!
Tomorrow is Friday, and we all know what that means: it means that the weekend follows. We’ll be drinking—since we’re not prohibited—our Amway wine from our Pringles cans, and taking Instagram pics of all of the Benjamins we’re saving. Plus, dat 45 cent concert is gonna be dope, foo, know what I sa’in?!?