The 13 Thursday Exit
1. Most people like to ride shotgun in a car, but I like to sit in the backseat because it’s more like a couch that I can stretch out and rest on and spread all my stuff out.
2. Number 40 of my 100 Things About Me says: I’d rather be stuck in traffic than drive on the Autobahn in Germany.
3. I don’t like speed. I ride my bike downhill with the breaks on. Speaking of bikes, here is a 2001 Roanoke Times story about biking through Floyd that still applies.
4. I once used a bike for my only form of transportation for over a year because my then boyfriend/roommate bought a little blue karmann ghia with a stick shift and I didn’t know how to drive it. I learn best by doing and not by being taught, so once I got tired enough of not having a car to use, I arranged to get dropped of with the car in an empty parking lot and taught myself to drive it. I only drive stick shifts now.
5. My friend Juniper once got 2 tickets in one day. She was able to get one thrown out on a technicality because her license plate reads SACRED but the cop wrote SCARED in the report.
6. The first time I fully understood the term being “floored” was when I saw whales off the coast of Provincetown for the first time. I was so amazed by the sight of them that I screamed and dropped to the floor. 
7. Recently, I reached for a glue stick, and my hand thought it was a chap stick. I was inches away from putting it on my lips when I realized what I was doing.
8. It reminded me of the time, years ago, when my grandmother sprayed RAID on her hair, thinking it was hairspray. And once my dad put grapefruit seed extract in his eyes because the bottle looked a lot like his real eye drops.
9. I’ve never run out of things to blog, but I frequently run out of the energy to write and type them up.
10. Is anyone else getting tired of clicking “ignore rule” when the spell check doesn’t recognize “blog” as a real word?
11. I once lost 5 years of my life driving Interstate 95 from Massachusetts to Washington DC, through NewYork and New Jersey, with 2 little kids in the back seat.
12. Last summer, I planned a solo road trip to Massachusetts to visit my family via our truck camper, but on the morning I was set to go, I had an anxiety attack and couldn’t do it. How did I manage to get myself to Massachusetts that summer? You can read about it here in a post called “The Runaway Bride.” This post also includes a noteworthy quote from my sister, Tricia, by way of a comment, in which she says, “I’d just as soon pluck every single one of my toe nails out – one by one – than make that trip alone!”
13. This space for rent. If you have a good father’s day quote, leave it as a comment and I’ll pick my favorite one to use in next Thursday’s 13.
Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13’s are here.
June 8th, 2006 8:46 am
Number 7?!!!!!!!!!! Oh my!!!
Hope you drop by and view my T 13 banners I made for you and the blogroll!
June 8th, 2006 8:56 am
OUCH! Was that glue stick hot?
June 8th, 2006 9:16 am
My Mom sprayed Raid on the dog one time to get rid of fleas and nearly killed the dog- apparently she was not supposed to do that!
June 8th, 2006 9:21 am
That’s a good idea, I’ll offer this woman at work some chapstick, and it’ll be a glue stick. (evil laugh)
June 8th, 2006 10:57 am
I would so love to see the whales.
I once drove I95 from Moosehead in Maine all the way to Key West. Once there, I was in a fender bender and immediatly drove home to VT. That highway is intense.
I can so imagine glueing my lips or raiding my hair.
June 8th, 2006 10:59 am
I have a VW Beatle that I can’t drive because I haven’t learned to drive a stick yet. You’ve inspired me to try again!
June 8th, 2006 11:10 am
I get carsick in the back seat. sometimes I get car sick in the front seat!
June 8th, 2006 11:31 am
#1: lol on long trips with my old boyfriend, Michael, I LONGED to be able to spread out in the backseat with my book, but thought it would be rude LOL!
#11: with this same boyfriend, we used to drive alot from MA to NC, stopping in VA for the night (at his sister’s place). I loved driving thru NY because you’d always see abandoned, graffitied, sometimes burning cars on the side of 85. Surreal.
#12: I love driving alone, so much. I’m weird!
#13: My Dad to me: It doesn’t matter to me what we do on Father’s Day, as long as we’re all together 🙂
June 8th, 2006 1:46 pm
I love your posts, because I never know what I can expect to find in them. Love the glue stick mistake too, sounds like me…. *lol*
June 8th, 2006 1:49 pm
Anne Sexton said, “It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.”
For me, it is a reminder to focus on the things we love about everyone in our lives.
June 8th, 2006 2:43 pm
Father’s day was on St Joseph’s Day (March 19) in Spain… it should be an international day! I’d rather drive in Germany than sometimes here in Spain! I have driven a stick all my life (and that IS a long time!) and now I am getting an automatic car in the fall…need to learn how to drive, lol. Happy thursday, love visiting your TT every thursday!
June 8th, 2006 3:02 pm
I just kissed my son last week and asked him what he had on his lips…it was a glue stick (he said, “chapstick”)! I learned how to drive with a stick-shift (or what we always called a “standard”)…talk about anxiety attacks!!!LOL I also got a ticket in Radford…on a day I wasn’t there…turned out to be the same make/color Blazer I had and the license plate was only off by one letter!
I tried to respond the other day to your pedicure post..but the electricity went out when I hit the post button…I wanted to tell you…your feet look similar to mine!
June 8th, 2006 3:40 pm
Tammy, we were poured from the same mold. The one that had Redman written on the label.
I call it standard shift too. Or did until recently. I guess I’ve lived here so long that I didn’t even notice the shift into using regional words. I swore I would never all a “bum” a “butt” but now I do!
Janet, I love driving alone too, but not in a truck and camper and not through cities like Harford. I don’t even like driving cars through cities, so I don’t really know what I was thinking.
I must say, I love reading 13T comments here. They are the best!
June 8th, 2006 6:09 pm
#9 is so true 😀 I often don’t get around to write down all the stuff I might have…. because of lack of energy or time – or both… But, man how many things there is to blog about…..
June 8th, 2006 8:55 pm
Another great 13. The little blue karmann ghia sounds cool. I thought I wanted a stick shift until I got one. Then I figured out that you couldn’t eat fast food and eat at the same time while driving through town. Now I’m back to automatics.
June 8th, 2006 9:53 pm
It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
Author: Anne Sexton
That was one I liked.
You tickle me sometimes. I can just see you going down hill on your bike holding your little breaks….I don’t want to mention the many tickets I’ve had or how I CANNOT get anymore!
I have to go knock on wood now.
June 8th, 2006 11:29 pm
I like driving alone, on a long trip, especially in the dark. I can play my CD’s, the Broadway Showtune ones, and sing to the top of my lungs. Did I mention that while my brother is a rising opera star, I don’t sing. I can carry a tune and keep it in the bucket and read music from those years of piano lessons, but that’s it.
My favorite OB told me a story about his father. When he was in med school back in the really, really dark ages, he had to do some type of experiment that required silver nitrate. He had some in a dark unmarked bottle in the bathroom medicine cabinet. One morning his father reached in, thought it was aftershave and splashed it on liberally. Silver nitrate reacts with skin to produce a silver black color. Needless to say, his father didn’t go anywhere for a week or two and was NOT pleased.
June 8th, 2006 11:36 pm
Sounds like the time I swallowed gentian violet pills as a girl, thinking they were something like M&Ms and my tongue turned purple. It was near Halloween and my mother said I would look good for Trick or Treating and I feared it was going to last forever.
I love to sing and drive…and dance. I’m amazed at how much dancing I can do without standing up.
June 9th, 2006 7:52 am
These are too funny! I read the last two with my hand covering my mouth!
Mayberry…it takes practice, but you can eat fast food while driving a stick shift.;)
June 9th, 2006 8:30 am
Michele sent me back, Colleen. She has a way of doing that! LOL
June 9th, 2006 9:39 am
Colleen, your blog always inspires me and keeps me wanting to push through whatever needs attention at the time. Reading your post is making Floyd become quasi-real to me- sort of like Lake Wobegon and that is cool. Be Blessed today my friend.
June 9th, 2006 6:53 pm
Ah, those memories of I-95! My first trip from Mass. to a friend’s place in Staten Island had me rolling along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, navigating enormous potholes behind a tow truck whose cables didn’t seem all that intact. Thereafter I took the Tappan-Zee into New Jersey and the Garden State Parkway, and eventually returned to NYC via the Goethals Bridge. It was worth the tolls.
June 10th, 2006 11:29 am
I’m sick of the “ignore” rule for anything.
June 11th, 2006 6:19 pm
I so hear you with the whole stick shift thing. My wife has agreed that when we add a second car to the family’s fleet – something that is sadly inevitable given our growins kids and increasingly complex work situation – it’ll be mine and it’ll have a stick.
Ah…can’t wait. I love the visceral feel of shifting for yourself. No automatic will ever come close.
June 12th, 2006 12:41 pm
Thank you for visiting my TT this past week! I learned how to drive on a manual transmission and detest an automatic. It’s so hard now to find a manual transmission car! To me shifting gears is what driving is about!