Dumb Things I’ve Done

Lubbock, TX – Day 23: Faulty Memory & Bombers Away

ND3 and a B-17


 
Today’s Roadside America picture is of the Flying Fortress of the Plains A metal cut-out sculpture of the B-17 bomber on the site of the WWII Hobbs Army Air Field. I had been here before, back in 2023, too bad I didn’t remember where here was.

Today’s destination was Lubbock, TX, which is a little over 300 miles from Santa Fe. It was a short driving day with only about 5 hours in the saddle. I had picked out a lunch spot in Fort Sumner and a Roadside America stop in Muleshoe, TX, to see the world’s largest mule shoe.

This route took me right through Clovis, NM, where I thought the above B-17 was located. I remembered that it was not far from the airport and was visible from the road. After taking a circuitous route all around the airport, I never found it. Plus, nothing seemed familiar.

In 2023 Donna and I took a road trip over to Laurel, MS, to visit the Hometown town of Laurel, MS. Our route was through Hobbs, NM, on the way there and Clovis, NM, on the way home. All three towns were in the running for us to possibly relocate to.

Turns out the B-17 sculpture was in Hobbs. With the planned short day of driving, I decided, what the heck, and would head south. But first, lunch. I fired up Google and searched for a place. The first one up was Mom’s Cafe with a 4.7-star rating. I headed that way, and as I started up the bridge that went over the railroad tracks, I had a hit of déjà vu. I already knew where I was going, Donna and I had breakfast at Mom’s Cafe back in 2023.

Instead of just the 100 miles I had left to go to Lubbock from the start in Santa Fe, I turned it into 240 miles with the Hobbs detour.

Santa Fe, NM – Day 4: No Data?

Started on the final leg to Santa Fe at around 7:30 AM. Because I have been heading mostly southeast, I have been driving into the sun the last few mornings. Today I should have started an hour earlier or later because US-160 is pretty much straight east out of Kayenta. Fortunately for me the sun was just high enough that the sun visor worked if I sat up real straight, it would block it.

The first stop of the day was in Farmington to get the Roadside America picture of the day, Sunny the Big Man (Muffler Man. I knew he was on a Main drag in town, but not which one, so I fired up Google Maps to direct me the last few turns. I didn’t have service, no map. Because I was listening to MP3s off the phone I didn’t realize it, but somewhere after the end of driving day yesterday I had turned off Mobile Data on the phone. Ooops.

Out of Farmington I hooked up with US-550 South and if Miss Google had her way, I would follow that to Bernalillo and then go 40 miles north on I-25 to Santa Fe. I would have none of that, just north of the town of Cuba I hung a left onto NM-96 which is a rural windy road with beautiful southwest scenery and it only cost me an estimated 7 extra minutes.

Not long after NM-96 ends at US-84 there is a town called Abiquiu that id home to the Big Pink Flamingo and Georgia O’Keefe’s home. I also had lunch in Abiquiu at the Inn there. Beef and Potato Soup with a big hint of Green Chili. The 50 miles of NM-96 and that lunch in that setting were enough to make the last 3-1/2 days and 1,500 miles worth it.

April Fools

Because I’ll be on the road June 1st I needed to set up a post with an article from the 3rd issue of the Miata Club of America magazine that I have doing doing on the first day of the even numbered months. When I reach on the top of the stack to get the June/July issue I came up with the April/May issue. Ooops, I forgot to do one on April Fools Day. What a fool I am.

I reached down and grabbed the June/July issue too. I picked an article from each, scanned the pages and went online to OCR the images. I formatted them both and I set the June/July post to publish on 6/1/25 and backdated the April/May post to have been published on 4/1/25. So go back and read it.

Lien On Me

I took out a loan for the New Blue Miata, made three payments (Oct,Nov,Dec) and two days after the December payment I paid off the rest of it. And I waited for my Title to show up in the mail. By the end of January, it still hadn’t arrived. I decided to check the loan account online to make sure it said paid in full, and it did. At the bottom of the page, I noticed a small line of text, “To request a lien removal letter, click here.” And I did. On the next page I was told the letter would take 5 to 7 business days to get to me. Huh? Any other time I had financed a vehicle they just sent it to you automatically.

I promptly went on a month-long adventure to Santa Fe and Hammond, LA with a friend and forgot all about Oregon and the Miata and the lien letter thing. Somewhere around the middle of February I went back online and clicked the link again. I gave it 2 weeks in regular days and still no letter. This time I dialed up Chase Auto Finance and got on a phone conversation with a human.

We ran through the details only to find that the dealer who sold me the car left off the ‘Unit 1’ part of the end of 21100 NE Sandy Blvd. While on the phone with me the CSR steered me to the right place to correct the address. I thanked him and hung up. I had to delete the incorrect address and add the correct one. I gave it a few days to get inside their system and clicked the link asking for the lien letter for the third time.

On business day eleven with no letter in my mail box, I call again. Same routine with a CSR as last time, check details and it turns out when I entered my own address in the account, I entered 2110 instead of the 21100. Duh! This time the CSR changed it for me and made me repeat my address a couple times just to make sure I knew what my address is. She told me that I didn’t need to click the link she would get one out in the mail today so it would get to me right away, well, 5 to 7 business days away.

The elusive lien letter arrived today via FedEx. When I opened up the envelope there were two lien letters in there, one dated 12/30/24 and another dated 2/27/25. I thought they would spit out a digital copy of what was on file, but no, someone dug around in a physical file cabinet in Monroe, Louisiana and sent me the actual 2 letters they tried to send me, but got returned.

Road Trip Day 1 – Santa Fe to San Angelo

We left real early with just enough light to see, so the first hour was spent driving south during the golden hour. This gifted us a sky with all the beauty of the southwest landscape illuminated by the predawn sun. Unfortunately, the previous day’s weather gifted us hard-packed snow and ice with all the danger of sliding off into a ditch along the side of US285 South.

After leaving the city proper on the way to Clines Corner we were traveling gingerly at about 40 MPH on a road with a speed limit of 75, passing a couple of vehicles stuck in the snow off the side of the road. Past Clines Corner the roads intermittently became clear or snow packed making the speed a lot higher overall until we got 20 miles north of Roswell when the road became all snow/ice covered, so it was back to a steady 40 MPH creep.

We did get lucky on our direction of travel too because some miles south of Ramon, NM the north bound lane was blocked by a semi that got stuck making a turn onto US285 North. There were a couple dozen cars stuck behind it, with three State Troper cars sitting there in the middle of the median, doing who knows what. About 5 miles later there was a fire truck angled across both of the north bound lanes with probably 100 cars backed up behind him. It wasn’t until just now as I write this in the San Angelo hotel I realized what the fire truck was probably doing, it was just past a rest area and a pass thru to our side of the divided highway, so as to make it easier for a wrecker to get to the semi and move it off the road.

There was a detour on the route Google was sending us to circle around Roswell and I missed a sign for a detour turn necessitating a quick U-turn. This was the first of three with me at the wheel. After Roswell, the rest of trip was clear sailing, except for me driving right by where we supposed to turn south in Plains on Texas 214. This one was because I always keep the voice muted because it interrupts the music playing. Secondarily, I also keep Android Auto showing what music is playing full screen. After that incident it was suggested to me by my passenger to at least keep the map visible. Because we were long past the correct route Google had me U-turn (#2) go back part way towards Plains and head south on some random Farm to Market road. U-turn number three happened after passing one of the turns along the zig-zagy correction route. I may have had the map full screen, but mute was still. I was suggested to me by my passenger that perhaps it would be good to unmute madam Google too.

Without further incident we made it to our late lunch meeting at KD’s Bar-B-Q in Midlands with one of Donna’s older brothers who lives about 50 miles west, in Monahans. The BBQ there is in fact quite terrific all three of us piled more food on our trays that a normal person, if 30 years younger than us could eat, but that was okay because they had readily available to-go boxes for us to take the leftovers with us. I’m not sure I want to have my leftover ribs for breakfast in the morning, so maybe there should be a more sensible sized lunch tomorrow allowing us to eat that stuff at tomorrow’s Homewood Suites outside Houston.

Extra Extra

For my morning coffee I use Dunkin’ K-Cups sweetened with Dunkin’ Creamer Extra Extra to as closely mimic the Dunkin’ experience as possible. Sometime early on in our lives here in Fairview, our go-to grocery store, Fred Meyer, stopped carrying Extra Extra. This meant that about once a month I would have to drive to the Safeway a mile or so further than the Fred Meyers, and buy two 32oz bottles of the Dunkin’ creamer. I could also get it at an Albertson’s about the same distance away as Safeway, just in the exact opposite direction.

This morning after fixing my normal cup of coffee I knew that I wouldn’t have enough Extra Extra to last me until the end of the week. I headed over to Safeway and there weren’t any bottles of Dunkin’ creamer. There weren’t any open slots where the Extra Extra would have gone. Hmmmm, did they stop carrying it too? Was it worth it to even try Albertsons seeing as they are the same company as Safeway? In the end, I thought it might be worth it. It wasn’t. This store had the same set up as Safeway, no Extra Extra and no empty spot for it.

Now I have a vague recollection of buying some Extra Extra at a Walmart. Maybe here, maybe Klamath Falls or maybe my imagination. The closest Walmart is all the way back over near the Safeway I left a while back. Another hazy communication bubbled to the surface from the depths of my mind, “Use the Walmart App Luke.” Dang, could have used it before driving over to Albertson’s. All that Walmart had for Dunkin’ creamer was the seasonal Pumpkin Spice.

Now I’m worried, have they stopped making it? The horrors! So, I head back home in a funk. What’s a guy to do? Give up coffee? Drive over to Stomping Grounds and buy a $6 latte every morning? I google, “Has Dunkin’ stopped making Extra Extra creamer?” The answer returns in milliseconds, “No they have not stopped making it and is available at several retailers like Target, Walgreen’s…” SHIT!!

There is a Target store three quarters of a mile closer to me than even Fred Meyer. I know this because I pass right by it once a week on my loop to get that $6 latte at Stomping Grounds. I guess I’ll take the short drive over in the morning to see. I they don’t I’ll guess that I’ll buy one of those Stomping Grounds lattes to drown my sorrows.

I thought I’d be nice and not put this at the top of the post like I first thought, because every time I say, or even think about, this post’s title I hear it in the voice of the Little Caesars cartoon guy saying, “Pizza Pizza.” I was trying to avoid you catching that little ear worm of mine. You probably only did that once here instead of the other eight times in the body of the post.

Drafts Folder

Sometimes when I have an idea for a post, but don’t want to actually write something just then I’ll save it for later. Sometimes when I don’t have an idea for a post just then, I’ll just go to the Drafts folder and get one.


1) The Big Leagues post has zero tags. So, what was I thinking there? Fortunately inside the draft there is text. It is almost a complete post that starts out like this, “Really hard is an understatement when it came to the…” I’ll probably get back to that one.
2) Next down, Almost Did It Again, is tagged TV. Inside the post body is one word, “Travelers.” Its dated almost 5 weeks ago and there is absolutely no way I know what I meant there. Marked for deletion.
3) Artificial Intelligence. Look at all those tags. I think I was going to complain about something timing-wise on the dryer or the haptic buttons, but I can’t get enthused with this topic anymore it will be deleted too.
4) Lastly is Boom! and it has neither tags nor any text in the body. To top it off, the Draft was saved 233 weeks and 5 days ago (7/6/2020.) But this one is so memorable that all I’ll ever need is the title. I will definitely write this one next year. Real soon too, look for it in January.