I'm either heading to my tugboat and work for 3 weeks, or getting off the boat and heading home for 3 weeks.
Pretty cool schedule, huh?
Anyway, these rides are similar in that many times the road traveled is the same but the atmosphere is quite different.
After 3 weeks on the boat, as nice as it is, a bit of cabin fever takes over.
As I throw my bags in the back of the cab and slump into my seat, a feeling of relaxation comes over me that I haven't felt in those 3 weeks. It's like...ahhhhhhhhh.
Watching the boat disappear behind me as the cab pulls off, well, there's no other feeling like it.
Maybe you get it on a Friday afternoon as you leave your workplace looking forward to the weekend.
Times that by 3 and you know how I feel.
On the other hand, the ride TO the boat is a bit different.
Today as I settled into the back of a Town Car heading for New York's LaGuardia airport, thoughts of time spent at home the last 3 weeks were bombarding my brain.
The nice diner out with my wife.....working in the yard.....spreading 10 yards of mulch in our gardens.....relaxing on the couch watching the NBA finals with a Guinness at the ready....hanging with my kids......Latin Dancing at the Latin Palace.....yelling at Simon Cow, disagreeing with his latest critique of my favorite Idol, all these thoughts were dancing in my head until I saw this bumper sticker, which ruined my mood.
In front of us was a big 8 cylinder SUV with a bumper sticker that loudly proclaimed, "STOP OFFSHORE DRILLING"
Are you kidding me?
That SUV guzzles more gas than a fuel funny car, and this guy wants to stop drilling?
Almost every part of that luxurious car was made with petroleum based products, except for the leather interior. (That's fuel for another post.)
And he's mad at those darn drillers?
I imagined him heading to his home, that was built with materials that were delivered by barge, that was pushed with tugboats that devour diesel fuel at a rate of 4000 gallons a day.
I imagined him entering his electrically lit study in his oil heated home to sit at his petroleum base made computer to rant on his blog about the downfall of civilization because of the offshore drillers.
I'm not a huge fan of big oil companies.
I'm totally not a fan of oil spills.
The oil spill in the Gulf is not the result of drillers, but the result of a mismanaged, ill equipped and a ill prepared oil company.
I like oil. I like to drive my car.
Walking to New York, for me, would suck.
So, unless you live in a log cabin you built by hand with the axe you widdled from an oak branch, where you cook your meals over an open fire that you start by rubbing 2 sticks together and unless you saddle the family horse to go for that Sunday drive with the misses.......
Stop Whinning!
6 comments:
Well said by someone the knows first hand. No whining here...that barge will soon have all my belongings on a shipping container heading for NY harbor and I'm happy. I'm happy of all the USA has to offer especially after two years without some of it. I like your schedule but I imagine your Monday blues are 3x fold.
I am not whining either. I just wish somebody could stop this recent oil from the continual release!!!! It is awful! Somebody invent the cure...please!
Hugs
SueAnn
could you ask the new york times if they have a spot for this in their paper....
seriously, there's a bunch of people who need to be slapped with this "shut up with the whining already" truthfulness that you wrote so perfectly !
Of course you're right, but. . . The ineptitude of those haphazardly drilling to fulfill their greedy mission -- that's what burns me up. Of course we're dependent on oil and natural gas. Practically everything we own uses petroleum in some form or another. It was set up that way years ago and we haven't bothered to change a thing, thinking we had an endless supply of oil. We've found ways to cut air pollution (no more brown skies in D.C. during the summer - yay!) and other efforts are trying to clean up our water. Can't be soon enough, though.
Mark,
Yours is just about the most realistic, most honest, response I have heard to the "stop drilling" debate. That issue is in many ways like the one raging over our immigration confusions. It's easy to want everything without any of the complications or without having to deal with situations that would exist if people actually get what they say they want. I hope we can someday sit and have a Guinness together someday.
Jerral
Such a good perspective Mark! No arguments from me :)
Would you believe we are NOT cheering for the Flyers? Nolan is trying to get over the Pens loss, and the rest of my family is trying to get over the Sens loss... Matt Cullen is from our town and so is Brian Lee... we always cheer the locals on. So, with Jonathon Toews (whom we cheered for at UND) playing for the Blackhawks well... :)
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