Screw you Ohio!

Honda will stop making motorcycles in the U.S. next year and move the work to Japan, pulling the plug on its first U.S. plant. The 330,000-square-foot Marysville, Ohio, plant, built in 1979, makes the Gold Wing bike. The work will be shifted to a plant in Japan that can produce bikes more efficiently.

It has been months...

since I trashed T/A. So let's talk about Amarillo, TX. There are many choices for dinner. All the big truck stops have a location here. I chose the T/A because I'm tired of FJ, Petro, and Love's. You couldn't pay me to stop at Pilot, let alone be dumb enough to eat at one. Besides, I like the Idle Aire internet service at T/A. So fast forward - the food from the T/A buffet here was terrible. I, thank God, have never been in prison, but this "stuff" was probably as close I will ever get to jail chow. The fried chicken was dry and over cooked, the unhealthy fried "fish" was rubbery. Do you remember those little rubber super balls that would bounce really high? This was the T/A "fish." I should have tried to bounce it on the table. There were 2-3 items that I can't describe. In general the whole buffet selection was "slop" - pig food. And believe me, if I owned pigs, I would give them better. I lost my appetite after only a few careful bites of what was on my plate. The service was just ok. I should have gone over to Popeye's or Burger King. $11 bucks down the drain. And, adding to my "jail house" experience were the truckers around me, who, based on their appearance, looked just like inmates at any Federal Correctional Facility.
The next day at the Baytown TX T/A location - food equally as bad and the service - horrible. Why is it that T/A waitresses have so many problems when they have more than 3 tables? I guess that's why they work at T/A. Kudos to all those professional servers who work at independent truck stops and can take care of a whole restaurant of customers all by themselves. This location was a ripoff at $14 (without tip) for their buffet and a Pepsi. The same thing over at the FJ costs $9.75.

I greatly appreciate your...

service. But many former servicemen, now released from their service obligations or retired, are now driving trucks. Some of them now work for the carrier I work for. And, I find them, well, kind of strange. When I grew up in the 60's, we used to call it "queer." Now, I mean absolutely no disrespect. But when I'm sitting in my truck, and a driver (who says he just got out of the service) starts talking to me about his military service and proceeds to talk nonstop on and on barely taking a breath - this is weird to me. One young man - 29 years old - he made a point to tell me how old he was several times - went on non stop for about 20 minutes without even asking me anything - just telling me a bunch of stuff I couldn't care less about. He was no different from the "special forces" crowd (a lot worked for Mercer) that I used to have to listen to at the counters of truck stops everywhere. Hey, I'm glad your back, but I'm not your "dial-a-friend" and I have better things to do than waste my time listening to your bullshit.

I don't know why...

but I never listened to Lou Dobbs on CNN. I was focused on other programming elsewhere. But with all the political stuff going on, I was looking for another opinion. This guy is good. People like to call me angry. I like it. This guy is edgy, smart and angry. I like him. You should listen. He's on before Bill O'Reilly (Fox) on Sirius 132 CNN.

I have this fantasy...

After weeks on the road, I want to come home and have my bedroom look like this. I'm so tired of the clutter, crafts, dust and other fuzzy things. If you live in Florida, many homes have what they call "popcorn ceilings." I hate them. They are a pain the butt to keep clean and extremely difficult to paint. I want to take one of those mini-dozers and shove all the junk out the front door into a large trash can.

Open wide...

This photo is by Wilmar D. Zehr. It is not me nor do I know who the patient or doctor is. More to the point, I'm sure hoping the guy has health insurance. If he is working for a carrier like the one I work for, he has excellent health coverage. If he is like thousands of Americans, he lost his job for whatever reason and he is not covered. His blood pressure is most likely high because he cannot afford this visit or the tests the doctor will need to determine how healthy (or sick) he is. You know that when you lose your job you can obtain a continuation of coverage under Cobra. If you know anyone who can afford the coverage under Cobra, please tell them to contact me. The last time I was out of work, Cobra coverage for my family was about $650 a month! So, according to the Republicans, I should spend a lot of my free time worrying about "the terror threat", what I'm really scared about is losing my job or being too old to work and not having good health insurance coverage, at a price that I can afford. Our "representatives" need to spend more time solving this "crisis" rather than hearing how much steroids were shot into millionaire baseball player Roger Clemens butt. And Hillary can't do it alone.

Holy smokes!

what has happened to the price of groceries? Have they lost their minds? Fuel is high, but price of every damn thing in the store is ridiculous! They're certainly not paying drivers any more to transport it. The folks at Exxon and Shell are getting richer not the baggers, checkers, farmers, butchers or people who have to pay for the stuff. Milk, bread, basic staples - whatever - seems to cost $3.50 or more. Coffee is over $6. A multi-pack of Gatorade is $8. Maybe we could ship groceries over from China and buy them cheaper here. Forget that we would probably either glow in the dark after eating it or get sick from the crap they put in their "food." Some states are thinking about eliminating taxes on groceries. What are they waiting for? I have to drive about 325 miles for my family to afford a typical grocery order. And that order still needs to be supplemented by additional visits later in the week and over the weekend for milk and dog food. I made about $50K last year. I made about the same back in 1990. My father made $50K back in 1975. I joke that I've worked damn hard to work my way down the ladder. I have to think twice about buying some items. It's cheaper just to have dinner at Wendy's then have a home cooked spaghetti and meatball dinner. This stinks.

Well, Ollie, this is another...

fine mess our government has gotten us into. Just what the hell was JFK thinking? Cuba is the same distance from Miami as my front door is from Disney World. Relations with Castro should have been repaired decades ago. Seems we like to send our young men and women to places like Vietnam and Iraq, thinking we can fix things, but ignore our "neighbors." I'm tired of hearing about other countries human rights abuses when our dear USA has a miserable history of screwing Native Indians, African Americans, Japanese Americans, and God knows who else. Gitmo is a glowing example to the world of how we conveniently ignore rights. Yes, they are (supposedly) terrorists, but unless we are trying real hard to mirror China, North Korea and Iran, these folks must receive fair non-military trials. So Castro is retiring and his brother is taking his place. Can we patch things up? I never had a say in the matter. Seems my government decided on their own to make Castro and Cuba "my" enemy. My government decided without any input from me, to prohibit me to buying a cigar from Cuba. Everything else from China is ok. That pisses me off. So, if Obama wants to take a little trip down there and talk to the folks, please, I encourage him to do so.

Yang Ming...

So I decided to take US33 from I77 in West Virginia to I70 through Ohio on my way to Chicago. Did you ever hear of the Rocky boot company? I never did. But there it was off to my right. What caught my eye was the Yang Ming containers backed up to their receiving doors. When I got to the Petro I looked Rocky up. What I passed was their corporate headquarters, warehouse and distribution center. Attached to these facilities, according to their website, is their "original" manufacturing building from 1932. It does not say if there is any manufacturing still done there. I don't think there is. No, the manufacturing is done where those Yang Ming containers come from - the Far East. I guess Rocky decided at some point that the people in and around Nelsonville could not make boots. Those people need a fair wage, benefits like health insurance and God forbid a pension. The folks over in China don't get those things. So much for screwing the American worker. Shame on this company. I think it's time to bring manufacturing back to America.

I just don't know...

if I'm ready (or able) to take four or more years of this. Today, on my way through 55 mph Ohio, she said to Obama "Shame on you." And you know, I just didn't care. I cannot muster up any passion (or interest) in whether or not Obama or his staff got her position on NAFTA wrong. The Clinton's supported NAFTA and it was then and is still a lousy idea. If she does not win in Texas and Ohio, then its bye bye. She ran the same shitty campaign that Rudy ran. I, for one, was and still am very surprised. I suspect that there are other things that I don't like about her. She was supporting a 55 mph speed in NY State. I want to buy Cuban cigars. I don't think she wants me to. She certainly doesn't want Bill to. I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she keeps pushing me away. But maybe she should stay in the Senate.

New addition to my shit list...

So I'm off doing other things. But, then comes these Congressional "steroid" hearings starring Roger Clemens and the pinhead to the left, Henry Waxman, representing the 30th District of California and serving as the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Trying to contact Waxman, I found out that he does not accept e-mails from non-constituents. Well, as the saying goes, isn't that special. One of the big problems I have with "our" government is that I (we) do not elect loons like Waxman to these committee positions. Any system that enables someone like Waxman to hold a hearing on baseball and steroids, where we heard way too much about Roger Clemens butt, is wrong. Politicians from California are nuts. Many of the people from California are crazy. Waxman who was elected many years ago and has found a very comfortable "home" in the House. But this guy is wasting my tax money and I don't like it. He takes a well deserved place on my shit list.