It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, April 14
And Sparrow is on vacation!!!
Not the four days and London and the luxury cruise back, and greetings are issued from Ogallala, Nebraska, one hell of a rathole town.
Key to packing for this trip was not forgetting the falsies…Honestly, I hardly wear them anymore because the only people who see me without a mask are Head Housekeeper Gloria and a porter named Juan and they couldn’t care less and while Gloria and I have a pleasant, easy-going working relationship, I hardly need to impress her nor do I need to impress Hispanic male porters…So for a while now I’ve not even bothered wearing the falsies in. I used to, but they were always removed right after reporting for duty.
So I had them in as soon as I woke up Tuesday night because – all together now – at Sparrow’s rapidly advancing age you MUST take care of things the instant you remember them because falsies aren’t something you can pick up at the retailer.
In geographical news, when I pulled out immediately after Assistant General Manager Candace relieved me at the hotel, the elevation was about 6,900 feet and for the first part of the route it got higher, the high point being 8700 feet or so on I-80 between Laramie and Cheyenne…It is still winter in these places and there had been snow the night before and the roads were slow…I made it to a small town that used to be an irregular stop on the Doily Delivery Company route for a stack of hotcakes and the pass between there and Laramie was mostly slush, the worst road condition there is.
(Ice you can slow down on, snow actually provides some traction but slush, whoa Nellie, that will take you where it wants you to go even with appropriate caution)
It was so bad on the downside of the pass I put the new ride into low gear because you want to brake as little as possible in these situations and then I thought this might be a bit much but then – with Movie of the Week timing – there was a car that had slid off to the side, so I stayed cautious…I was passed a couple of times of guys in large pick-up trucks compensating for small wangers, but that’s their lookout and not mine.
I stopped for gas in Cheyenne and the new ride was as dirty as it’s ever been…The wheel wells were packed with slush, too, so much that it actually affected the car as I turned off the off-ramp…I am not making that up…Masks aren’t mandatory in Wyoming, either, but I still wore mine because despite being vaccinated, I think it is still a reasonable precaution to take because the vaccine is still rather new.
After Cheyenne, visibility improved and once you got into Nebraska the roads improved and the speed limit on the Interstate there is 80 mph which while good for morale is lousy for gas mileage.
I stopped reporting MPG figures when they fell below 33 MPG but I put some gas treatment in and it’s working its way back up and was actually 37 MPG when I filled up earlier this week in town, but high speeds like this tend to guzzle gas…There a feature on the panel of the new ride that displays your current MPG and at 70 MPH it’s right up there around 40 MPG but boy, you get to 80 MPH and BOOM you’re down to 32/33 MPG I am not making that up…But you go 80, tho, because one, you don’t want to be a slowpoke and, two, you want to get where you’re going as soon as you can.
I was at the hotel at what I thought was 1500 local time but was actually 1400 because the western third of Nebraska is still in the Mountain time zone for reasons I’m sure someone thought good…There was a time when I would’ve known this because crap like this interests me probably more than it should, and privately I scolded myself for not remembering this.
I put the time to use, tho…I went to the retailer here to get a sack of frozen peas because I have to eat green veggies every day now (they’re the same price, 84 cents) and then I got the new ride washed, seven bucks for a touchless, better-than-I-was-expecting wash, tho it didn’t have those big blowers that dry your car, at least not the $7 Value Wash, and I was back at the hotel promptly at 1500.
They’d changed shifts and there were two neanderthals in the lobby, one working man in a bright yellow safety jacket and the clerk who would be responsible for checking me in…Let me tell you something, he had some zero clue about serving others…Instead of greeting me and inquiring as to how he could best be of service, he allowed Yellow Vest Guy to continue to yammer about the 45 days he had recently spent in the joint for assault which was “complete bullshit” because the cops “had it in” for him and he was throwing the f-word around like he’d had the benefit of prior naval service.
Meanwhile, I stood there with my thumb up my ass…This is not how guests are treated and eventually the guy wandered off to go hold his stop sign and, eventually, yours truly was checked in…The room smelled nice tho the flooring wasn’t carpeting, it was some sort of tile…It sort of looked like carpeting if you were high and/or not paying too much attention at first glance, but got cold just like any tile floor would and the slippers would have been useful…As it was, my warm socks did OK pressed into emergency service.
Tomorrow’s destination: Omaha.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: Even on vacation, there isn’t any sleep to report on Wednesday.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
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