Leaving Lakewood

Monday 2/27/2006 -

30 degrees

Snowy grey

Things start out splendidly.

I loose Donnie after literally 5 minutes on the road.

We both had full tanks of gas in our vehicles, but were lacking caffeine. We stop at the Speedway down the street and I buy some coffee. I walk over to his vehicle to give him his cappuccino.

“All set?” I ask.

“Let’s go,” he nods. As I walk back to my car, he pulls out of the gas station and disappears.

“Wait!” I yell. “Stop!” I get into my car, situate myself and find a space for the coffee. I try the CB radio but get nothing. Okay, so now what? I pull into traffic, find my way to the interstate and try the CB again: “Radio Check - Channel 21.” Still nothing. One would think it would be difficult to loose a low-riding S10 pickup with a boat strapped to the roof towing a white trailer, but somehow it managed to elude me until the Columbia Road Exit. I keep trying the radio, without rhyme or reason (thinking back, I should have tried it before each exit or at each mile marker as a sort of landmark.) Finally, a voice comes through.

“I’m off the interstate.”

“Where!” I yelp.

“Columbia Road Exit,” he says, just as my car cruises past the off ramp. “At the BP gas station.”

“Stay there - I’ll be a minute.”

Remember of course that this is early morning, by now around 7:30 - 8 a.m. The opposite direction on I-90 is filled with rush hour traffic, and so to swing back around to Columbia Road would be a laborious task. So I chose to take the side streets and add another 15 minutes onto our little separation. Probably a good thing, since I would have strangled him if I’d exited right away. When I did pull into the BP, I was still angry and so thought it best not to get out of my car lest violence erupt.

“Where did you go?” I ask.

“I got excited” he says.

And thus we agreed to radio check every time we took off.