Hey, Andy! Where'd that tree come from?

Spring is still working on Pennsylvania, but down in Virginia it's getting out-and-out green.

It's almost there in PA—so much red tinting it looks like fall through, uh, those amber-tinted driving glasses that don't have a major brand name. But cross the Alleghenies, and the temperature goes up ten degrees and the green is everywhere. The trees still LOOK bare, but the green tint has taken over from the red. The hills know what color they are now.

I'm on a stretch of US-220 that's gone full-house limited access. Signs proclaim it the “future I-73 corridor.” This section could lacks only the name change. But it's a 40-mile roller-coaster ride, even now. I find myself thinking of what driving through these, um, hills when it was all two-lane.

Remembering an episode of Andy Griffith, of all things. As I recall, the Sheriff's office somehow got hold of a motorcycle with sidecar, and Barney got massively excited. He started running a speed trap at the bottom of a steep hill just outside Mayberry, ticketing every trucker that broke the speed limit getting a running start to climb it. Within a week everyone in town was spending their nights awake, listening to roaring diesels, as an endless string of backed-up 18-wheelers took turns climbing that hill at a walking pace in low gear. Andy finally had to take steps.

As a kid, I didn't really understand the problem...

At about that point in my musings, traffic slowed to a stop in front of me. The Future I-73 Corridor had become a parking lot.

Not as bad as some. A tree had fallen across the highway, blocking both lanes. If I had to sit in a highway going nowhere, it was kind of nice not to wonder if anyone was dead up there.

About half an hour later they'd cut the top of the tree out and opened the left lane. By that time it was too late to legally get to the terminal I was bound for. So I found a truck stop (was surprised by it, actually. Another three seconds and I would have missed the turn) and settled in.

Nothing deep here. Just driving and musing and resting. Think I'll concentrate on that last part now.

G'nite.