And suck in your gut a little...

South Georgia. Green with splashes of white—the dogwoods are out in force.

Spent much of the day on two-lanes, past pecan plantations and other big flat farms, or passing through tree-lined passages that sometimes seemed tunnel-like.

Rounded a curve at one point and saw a police car at the crest of the next hill, all blue and flashing. A line of cars backed up in front of him. A tractor-trailer pulling clear off the road behind them.

The driver of the semi got out and waved at me. I stopped well short, in case he was telling me I'd have to pull some fancy maneuver. He came over, and I learned I was right. He said he thought the police car was escorting a wide load. That's why he'd pulled off onto the shoulder, to make room for whatever was coming.

Sounded good to me. So I pulled off the road, too.

The shoulder was wide and grassy and solid. You don't see that very often, on back-country two-lanes. The usual foot of crumbly gravel next to the two-foot drainage ditch could have been bad. It occurred to me that the police car may have stopped everybody here because of that. I hope so—always nice when somebody does something sensible.

Then I didn't have to wonder about some of this. Here it came.

It was a double-wide modular house. Or maybe triple-wide. Whatever it was, it took up the whole highway. Literally. A man was walking in front of the semi-tractor, waving it left and right, as the rig slowly weaved to avoid the mailboxes.

Then it stopped to let us by.

I suppose it would be a lot easier for us to slip by the house than for the driver and his flagman to try and slip by us. But I was even more grateful, as I crawled along, for that wide grass shoulder and the near absence of a ditch.

That was the exciting part of the day. All I really needed, anyway.