Heroic Indigo Drive

I’ve written before about my wife’s reluctance, bordering on pathological fear, of solitary long distance driving.  She won’t do it.  It’s frustrated some of her friends who would like to see her visit more often but unless I or some other co-pilot is available – it’s not going to happen.  That’s what makes yesterday’s events so notable.  One of her closest friends, the Maine Musquetera, lost her father in law.  He was in his nineties and fought the good fight but finally succumbed yesterday morning.

The Deep Freeze Kept the Top Up

In a move that sent shock waves up and down the east coast my wife decided she was going to make the trip by herself to support her friend.  That’s kind of how she rolls.  Her sense of loyalty to her friend trumped the intense fear she had of long distance driving.  I was required to call her every hour to monitor her progress and answer any questions she had but I could tell by the third hour she was confident to the point of being a little cocky.  I told her the myth of being unable to make this kind of drive was forever shattered and no longer available as an excuse.  She reported this was the first thing the Maine Musquetera said to her when she arrived.  Taking on something you fear and succeeding is one of the best feelings in the world.

USAA is doing their usual superb job of support for my Friday episode of idiocy.  Their adjuster showed up exactly when promised yesterday morning and after twenty minutes handed me an appraisal which he also sent to the repair facility.  I stopped by there and they were ready to start as soon as my wife brings the injured beast back from her Maine sojourn.  It goes in next Monday and USAA had already set up a rental car for the time we’ll need it.  I still feel like a complete moron.

Speaking of morons, my dateless date night saw me at Dumb and Dumber To.  I know this movie has been excoriated by critics over the last week but I kind of liked it.  Carrey and Daniels share this great, if over the top, chemistry that makes the further adventures of Harry and Lloyd work.  Not all of the gags succeed but enough of them do that I found myself guiltily laughing.  The Farrely brothers did a great job of bringing enough of the original premise forward twenty years but taking it in another direction.  As with all Farrely efforts there were some serious scatological moments.  I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard in months as when Harry’s cat expelled some feathers – just too funny.  This movie won’t work for some people (o daughter of mine) but it did for me.

Inevitably another Travis McGee adventure, Dress Her in Indigo, fell beneath the onslaught of my John D. MacDonald reading obsession.  Trav is back in Mexico again, accompanied by the stalwart Meyer.  They’re trying to learn about the last days of the daughter of a friend recently found dead there after falling in with a group of wandering flower children.  MacDonald weaves his usual great story inserting his fascinating, sturdily constructed characters: a gay kung fu expert, an oversexed British noblewoman, and the customary bevy of villains and beauties.  MacDonald takes on the generation gap, the establishment versus the hippies that so dominated the social discussion at the time this was written. 

Here’s McGee speaking to Meyer after encountering a virulent anti-establishment hippie:  “Old friend, there are people – young and old - that I like and people that I do not like.  The former are always in short supply.  I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it’s revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by an old one.  We are comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can’t see it that way bore the hell out of me.”