Guys Day Out; or the Tale of the Tarp-strap Trail

Long, long ago in a city far, far away Dave visited the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, Home to the Cardinals and company that makes a product that resembles beer.  He decided that since he had not been there in 20 years it was time for a return trip.  So Dave, DJ, John, Sam, Mark and Myself loaded up the in car and headed west.

Unfortunately, Dave’s directions did not include construction, or any changes in the road in the last 20 years.  After much discussion and several “I don’t remember that being there last time I was here.”  I was unanimously elected navigator and began to program Marybeth’s Garmin.  Unfortunately it was too stupid to spell “St. Louis” so we confiscated DJ’s phone and used it as a makeshift sextant.

A few wrong turns and the fact that DJ’s smartphone/Ipod/navigation device didn’t know it’s left from it’ right we arrived at the Museum of Antiquated Travel.  There were several exhibits in the first building.  It mainly dealt with the civil war.

This caught my attention

This is a plug for a 480v engine.  I hate 480

This is a large snow blower

This is Sam waiting for a blow job

Make your own jokes for this one.

How true

This is going to be in my coffee table book of railroad art and graffiti

This engine is known as “Big Boy” and it caused Dave to become giddy like a little kid

I was disappointed with a name like Big Boy I thought it would look like this

After leaving we went in search of food.  Being that 2/3 of the crew had Turner blood in their veins we immediately set about looking for a White Castle.   There was some grumbling the back seat from DJ, something about greasy cheeseburgers and a 3 hour car trip.  These comments were duly noted and ignored because there isn’t a White Castle in Princeton and we were hungry.  SUCCESS! We saw a White Castle sign, and we pointed the Ford that direction.  But we couldn’t find it, so we turned around and went the other direction thinking the sign was wrong.  Several miles later we still were without sliders.  So John turns the car around and Sam programs the GPS to find White Castle.  So now we are happily on our way to Gastrointestinal joy when heartbreak occurred.  As we drove up to the White Castle it became painfully obvious that the bulldozer parked in the front lot did not belong to a hungry construction worker but was on site because the restaurant was being remodeled.  (at this point DJ breathed a sigh of relief) But for once luck was on our side there was a Steak and Shake just up the hill, AND it was opened.

So we all enjoyed our meals and milkshakes, in a major ironic twist DJ ordered Steak n Shakes’ version of sliders which led to an in-depth discussion on what the hell was he thinking and Sam’s dissertation on the high quality of meat that White Castle uses.

Then Dave decided to avoid the construction we should go north to go south.  This is known as the Columbus theory of circumnavigation.  And just like Columbus we went exactly where we planned, sorta.

This lead us through more construction and then onto the scene of an accident.  But this gave us time to look along the side of the road and see what treasures we could find. You would be impressed all of the things that are along the highway.

Like this packet we saw.  I thought it was ketchup, Sam said it was mayonnaise but we didn’t have time to check

Then I saw a good tarp strap, and by good I mean it still had both ends.  And we weren’t moving so I decided to grab it.  Apparently everyone else in the car thought I was crazy but it was free.  Then I saw another, we had moved about 50ft so I grabbed it.  And then there was another one 100ft from that one.  And then there was another strap. And a bungee cord and another strap.  John saw a good ratchet strap, it had both the ratchet AND the strap but traffic had cleared and we had to leave it behind.  I think he was getting jealous of my small collection.

Then there was this moron who gives all Dodge drivers a bad name.

After that things were pretty boring, we drove across the great southern Illinois prairie which would bore me to death trying to farm it.  Where’s the challenge? No trees, no oil wells, no hills, washes or ditches.  All in all it was successful trip.  I’m thinking our next trip should involve going to Nashville…