Random thoughts

Sitting here with a box of Samoas and a cup of coffee, wondering which will run out first. That’s 15 Samoas. The box says a serving size is 2 cookies, “Servings per container about 7.” Why load 15 in a box? Who determined the serving size? One serving size (2 cookies) contains 150 calories, 70 from fat. Maybe it looks better, 150 calories per serving size, rather than 75 calories per cookie. A serving size also has “less than 1g” of protein and the same not-amount of dietary fiber. Nobody ever said Girl Scouts cookies are good for you, only that they are good.

Four down.

Next time around, I want to drive through Armenia (southeast to northwest), into Georgia, turn northeast and go across the mountains and into the steppe. Some areas of Armenia are amazing -- green valleys, high mountains, rocky plateaus. In the deep rural areas there are church buildings centuries old, native stone, and abandoned. That’s what some pictures show – old stone buildings with slate roofs, holes in the slate. There are similar pictures from Gaorgia.

For the drive I will have an M37 ¾-ton truck with an M101 trailer carrying a 250-gallon blivet of gasoline. The M37 listed range (loaded) is 225 miles on a 25-gallon tank. So I could get somewhere between 2200-2500 miles.

Thirteen down. I searched the net for Armenia and Georgia and M37, so it’s not like I wolfed down nine Samoas in a couple of minutes.

The Armenia-Georgia area figured in two dreams from about a dozen years ago. In the first dream, a man and a woman were in a car driving on a road of dirt and small white rocks. Land around the road consisted of low hills with short springtime green grass. The car was black, an open touring model, late 1920s or early 1930s, with a chrome-bordered windshield, chrome fender-mounted headlights, right-hand steering, a wood steering wheel and a spotlight mounted on the left side near the windshield. The man drove the car. He wore a white suit and a white hat. The woman wore a white summer-weight dress. That’s all there was in the dream.

The second dream … My father died in 1989. Ten years later, in a dream, I stood on a road similar to the one along which the man and woman were in the car. My father walked up. He said, “I need your help with something.” I said, “Okay.” My father said, “You’ll have to come with me.” I woke up. I thought in my mind: “Not this time.”

Cylla will be with me in my drive across Armenia and part of Georgia and into the steppes. She will be 20 and I will be 26, the same ages as when we were married. Cylla will learn (again) how to work a four-speed transmission. The M37 should be an easier learn than the 1977 Pinto wagon she first learned.