At around 3:30 yesterday, I just decided it was time to go home regardless of how I feel.  Not only did I want my own bed and a long hot shower - I can take a hot shower in the RV but only a short one - I also had work to face today.  But I figured I probably wouldn't make work.  Anyway, my mom was all over that, you can't drive can you?  I dunno, mom, but I gotta get home.  Got everything including the dogs in the car and took off. Literally.  I would waste no time stopping anywhere, even for fuel - though that was getting to the low side.

I got to the top of a long mountain pass and came up on a Forest Service/green pickup sitting right next to the road with it's lights flashing.  Wondered what that was all about.  Then I come up to a man in khaki's with a Hawaiian Luau shirt on, he was doing the slow down motion with his hands. We were at a turn, couldn't see what was going on around the turn.  Well, around the turn was a very gruesome sight.  A huge crash with 8 vehicles, 2 of them pulling boats, one of the boats VERY large.  Those vehicles were all on the roadway still, minor damage.  It was the SUV that had somehow lurched over the top of the guardrail - there was no damage to any guardrail there - and was totally destroyed that got my attention.  There were a couple of bodies laying on the ground and no-one working on them - the medics were there - whether those folks were alive or dead I couldn't tell.  I found it odd that Highway Patrol was nowhere in sight - they are the agency that works those kinds of accidents and I found it VERY odd that they had a civilian out there directing traffic.  Why wasn't that dude in the Forest Service truck out there?

Got past that and just zoomed home.  My speedometer doesn't work, but I can tell you that I was not going 65 mph.  I was hurting and feeling it and I wanted the trip over with.

Got home, got the stuff out of the car, called the ops manager at work - my manager is on vacation didn't want to bother him - told him I was out of commission and no way I could come to work tomorrow and yes, I went straight back to bed.  It's now 8 am the next morning and I am just starting to feel a little better.  I haven't eaten anything in 39 hours, my stomach is growling like crazy but I am still afraid to eat anything.  I am finally starting to feel a little better.  My strength is coming back to me even though I haven't eaten anything.  I will get the nerve up later on to get some soup and see what happens with that.

I did have an incident on the way up there that I forgot to mention.  On the Forest Service road - which is a dirt road that can fit 2 vehicles coming at each other but just barely - I came around a turn and see this vehicle coming straight at me.  On the wrong side of the road and actually heading for the ditch on my side of the road.  This is what happens when you aren't paying attention to the road and are, instead, paying attention to your electronic gadgets or whatever might have been going on inside of that vehicle.  I was almost stopped before this driver finally swerved back to their side of the road, narrowly missing an engagement with a deep ditch that would have damaged the vehicle and caused it to get stuck.  I hate to admit it, but I gave the person a certain finger gesture that was out-of-line with my Christian beliefs, but I did it and very much so in the windshield to ensure that they would see it.  I was pissed - this could have been a head-on collision and no-one wins in those kinds of crashes.  The car had realty plaques on the side of it.

I made the decision and went through with it: I am taking out another loan on 401k.  Most would advise against it, all well and fine but I am doing it anyway.  I do not have enough reserve cash around in case something happens - ie: central AC breaks down.  It's already happened once and I was fortunate that I had enough funds to cover the repairs.  I'm going to pay the car off - I am sick of car payments and the 401k payment is FAR less than that car payment and at a MUCH less amount of interest - which I pay back to myself anyway.  I will make a payment-and-a-half on the mortgage and that will bring me up to current.  My credit score has plummeted because of this house payment situation.  At some point it will come back up - probably be a while - and then I will consider about getting a pickup.  Conventional wisdom is to take the car payment that you were paying and deposit that into a savings account every month and pay for your next vehicle in cash.

Great wisdom, don't know if I can wait that long, will try doing it and see how much I can save up.  I don't want or need a brand new pickup, but I don't want a piece of trash, either.  BTW, my car loan is down to $1,840.41.  I know what's going to happen when I pay it off: all kinds of offers will start rolling in to trade in my old car to get a nice, new one.   New vehicles have huge drawbacks around these parts:  extremely high registration rates and extremely high insurance rates.  Once my car is paid off, I will no longer need comprehensive insurance on it.  It is 9 years old, dunno if I should continue it or not.  I definitely only have minimum liability on the 1994 Buick.  I told my son if he crashes the car and it's his fault and the car is destroyed, that's the end of it.  Stay out of crashes! And he has.  He has been run into in parking lots while he's not even around and no, those people that did the damage didn't bother to leave a note, they just left.  Good thing I didn't catch them doing that is all I can say.  My son didn't even notice the damage.

I am a truck driver, I have to do thorough inspections every day.  It crosses over to my vehicles and even vehicles of friends/ acquaintances.  I don't necessarily say anything to them when I see their brand new pickup with a fresh ding on it, I just notice it.

Well this is enough.  My head is starting to doing it's thing again.  Almost like I have been drinking.  Funny the stuff that sickness does to your entire body.  I think it time to go lay back down again.

ben