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Can you believe this? We couldn't.
In the overall frame of things, life is comprised mainly of small things strung together without a lot of coherence…or so it seems to me. Those fundamentalist friends of mine that believe in predetermined destinies and so on tend to overlook the power of Free Will, but then again the Catholics, of whom I count myself one, tend to overemphasize it, in my view…as Free Will talks to our power of choice, and how much choice do EYE have, for instance, in whether or not I actually leave Red Bay anytime soon, what with 127 identified dings being sanded down on the front end of our coach at the rate of maybe one an hour, and with people stacked up from here to doomsday waiting to get in to have the “Diamond Shield” protective film replaced on THEIR already-painted front-ends – which, as you already have picked up, we will have to stand or sit in line to have replaced as well??? If you can wend your way back to the beginning of that ultimate run-on sentence you’ll realize I asked a question…”how long, Oh Lord”…and the answer is VERY long, but who cares, really? In spite of my seeming attitude, we obviously have nothing better to do, we have to be somewhere, and anyway there is really much to enjoy around here. I’ve written about much of it already in our travel blog (see links) and won’t repeat it all. But I have to go back to one thing. Roads. To an RVer, roads are, if not everything, big. We take certain routes not because they are the most direct or the most scenic or the most anything but usually because they are the LEAST…the least problematic, the least bumpy, the least teeth-rattling potholed or filled with paint-scraping overhanging trees, the least populated by 18-wheelers…The Natchez Trace comes to mind as the ultimate RV Road, populated as it is by NOTHING commercial and paved perfectly from end to end. Some states absolutely suck for roads…California, in our opinion, is the worst of any, although we haven’t been to Alaska yet. But some excel, and Alabama is one of them. Not long ago Irene and I were out touring around the countryside near Red Bay…on our way, I think, to a town fair at Vina, about 12 miles out…and the little country highway we were on kept getting better and better until finally it was like riding on some bizzare black cloud, like sliding along on thick black cream.
Same Stretch, Another View....MAN!
The roads aren’t all like that around here, but enough of them are to make me wonder how a state that has a retiree property tax flat-lined at….are you ready?….$1.25 per year (not per thousand of assessed, OVERALL….per YEAR!) and not outrageously high sales or income tax….can do it. Anyway, look for yourself, and for us, we’ll just enjoy them while we’re here, and remember them longingly when we aren’t.