Back (ka-whomp) on The Planet Ann Arbor again.

It was a great week at Houghton Lake (HL) ending with gorgeous thunderstorms rolling through late last evening and into the night. It was warm enough we could open the doorwalls in the front room and the storms were persistent but not severe. No power outages. Those are awful at HL because we have well water and when the power goes out, so does the pump. Yer fav-o-rite blagger does not do well without her morning shower🤪

Because we had two automotive vee-hickles up there for the week (yes it’s wasteful but it was also necessary) we had to drive tandem going up and down. Technically that doesn’t mean we have to keep each other in sight the whole time but somehow it gets a little weird when we can’t see each other.

Problem. One of us has more testosterone than the other (guess who). I am not a slow driver and he is a careful driver. But. When we get separated, as we did a couple times today, it is because he is ahead of me (which I prefer overall) and calculates a risk (to run a yellow or pass a truck with tons of traffic coming up behind him in the left lane). I take a few nanoseconds longer to process those risk factors. Meaning I often get caught at a red light or don’t jump out into the passing lane in front of some super fast car or an interminable line of cars. The problem is, when that kind of thing happens, it takes me forever to catch up with him again without going 85 mph, which I CAN do but don’t LIKE to.

This kind of thing happened a few times today. The worst was probably the Zilwaukee Bridge. Or not. Because we didn’t go over the Zilwaukee Bridge today. Why? As we were approaching it there were about a bazillion orange cones and all kinds of “freeway closed” signs. So. Quick decisions in lots of jockeying traffic to get into the correct lane to take the loop west into and through Saginaw. The I75 SUV Speedway was calm in general but the loop through Saginaw was not.

At one point we were behind a semi truck that was not going slow but probably slower than the GG wanted to go. So he JUMPED over into the passing lane without warning. Fine. Except. There was a STEADY STREAM of traffic in the passing lane and I could not to save my life get over there to pass the truck. I did not have the balls to do that (TMI?)🤣

We’ve been tandem driving for a loooong time. In the old days, I’d’ve been totally pissed off. Today I just figgered I would eventually catch up to him. There was one more stress point and that was that I couldn’t exactly remember how the interchange BACK onto southbound I75 proper from the Saginaw loop worked and COULDN’T SEE THE SIGN BECAUSE TRUCK! I knew there was something funky about it and at the last possible nano-second, I glimpsed a sign that reminded me. Hanging a RIGHT would dump you onto NORTHBOUND I75 (to the Mackinac Bridge), where I didn’t want to go. Today. The right turn onto southbound I75 was a half mile or so LATER, which is where I DID want to go. I managed it all and the freeway opened up from two to four lanes and I didn’t even have to pass the truck because it meandered into some other lane all by itself and traffic was pretty light in general (probably because the goddamn bridge was closed so no one was entering the freeway from there). Eventually I caught up with the GG.

After dropping off some peeps and other Easter treats with FlaMan in Flint we managed to make it home without incident. A successful week of telecommuting from Houghton Lake and enjoying the off-season there.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2025 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.