Watch For Falling Rock.

If you will ever be attending the Broskey & Gromacki wedding and drinking heavily the night before a 5 a.m. wake-up call and 2-hour drive on a rain soaked turnpike, there are several things I feel you might want to know. For one, although operating your vehicle at 5 a.m. is no different than operating it at 5 p.m., it is in fact a different world you will be operating it in. As I belt in, turn the key, blast the heat, spin the dial to turn up the volume of the music and grip the wheel, my suspicions are quickly confirmed; I have prepared the greatest road trip mix CD, perhaps ever. However I have no gas. Once I fill up and I’m finally on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a Led Zeppelin track is playing. “The Rain Song” is quite poignant while driving in the rain, you must hear it in such conditions or else could be depressive otherwise. I am the only human in the world in my Hyundai to experience this tune, in this moment, and by the looks of things I could be the only man alive on the planet. As I drive east and east and east I pass a service plaza and can easily count the cars at a rest stop as I pass (3). Also at this hour, tractor trailers outnumber cars at said rest stop (5). I feel rotten, and though it’s BLAHHHHH on the other side of the windshield, at least I’m safe and warm inside my Hyundai. ..That is unless you consider the chance of falling rocks. If you should happen to be driving and read the road sign “Watch For Falling Rocks”—if your response to this road sign is “Well, perhaps this might make the first hour of my adventure on the Turnpike interesting”, there are only two conclusions. First, you are alert. Second, yIt’s always darkest before the dawn and it’s certainly not dawn. However you are an eternal optimist before the dawn it seems. You might redeem Mitch Williams and the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies in this lifetime after all. So go buy a framing hammer at the Home Depot and (rather than brushing your teeth with it you crazy) volunteer to spend a week of your vacation time building homes for a deserving home owner in Mississippi with Habitat For Humanity. You might make a difference.

Finally, here is a short list of songs you can listen to while volunteering anywhere in the world:

1) The Dears – Ballad of Human Kindess

2) Glen Phillips – Duck and Cover

3) Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – Me & Mia

4) Blind Melon – Change

5) The Clash – I’m Not Down

Love,
Alan