I'm in Love!!

So yeah, here's something you might not know about your favorite grammarian superheroine Saltminer...

I learned to drive when I was 16. (Shocker, huh?) Actually, that's not the interesting part. What's interesting is, my mother was terrified to ride with me. After the very first time, she told my father, "I'm never getting into a car with her again...EVER! She's got a deathwish and a need for speed... YOU teach her how to drive!!"

So he did. Of course, since she also refused to let me drive her precious car, I had to learn on my dad's enormous green truck (imagine the Incredible Hulk in vehicle form). This thing was a total beast. It had disk brakes (which means I basically had to put all my weight down and STAND on the damn thing to even get it to slow down) and enormous girth. I actually learned how to parallel park it (wonder of wonders) and even back up without hitting any small children or cars.

I loved it. I could drive that damn thing down any backroad ever designed by man or demon. It was great.

Sadly, I have never had the cash to buy a truck of my own (or the money for the gas it would take to feed one if I did). Still, I've always loved driving trucks.

Yesterday, I borrowed an F-350 from a friend to transport my bike across town so I could torture myself with my first bike ride of the year.

The bike ride was okay. (By okay, I of course mean, scary and painful as hell... When I arrived back at the truck, sweating and my legs shaking from effort, I actually threw up. It was the first time I've EVER thrown up after exercising, though I know that some runners do it fairly often).

On the other hand, driving the truck was freaking awesome!

I had to hoist myself up into the driver's seat by hanging on to the door frame for dear life. Once inside, since I couldn't move the seat, I had to scoot forward a little bit so that my feet could reach the pedals (I'm only 5'2" remember).

My feet didn't touch the floor.

SWEEEET.

I inserted a CD I had brought with me, cranked volume to max, rolled the windows down, and blew out of the driveway as though the hounds of hell were on my ass. (No, I did not spin my tires...That's juvenile behavior done only by boys who are afraid that other boys will think they are gay).

I had nearly forgotten how much power one of those beasts has but I remembered soon enough. I found that while barely touching the gas, I was up over 40mph...on a back road in Deering, NH.

I tried to summon the desire to slow down...and failed miserably.

Perhaps I'll go for another bike ride today...

Heh heh.