I have to do a fair amount of traveling for work. In any given day I drive an average of 150 miles. I am thankful that it is almost always away from the freeway. As I work for an agricultural firm (yeah we are killing the planet) I am usually held to the country roads, and one minor highway that leads the back way to Southern California. I'm in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley in Central California, and for those of you that aren't familiar with the area, it used to be flourishing with farming.

There was cotton, grapes, almonds, pistachios, lettuce, onions, garlic...Well you get the picture. Pretty much everything grows here. The soil is a miracle of nature in the Central Valley. It reminds me of those Sea Monkies from when I was a kid. Just Add Water..... That's pretty much the equation around here, just add water. Unfortunately the powers that be, aren't letting us have the water we need, so that is causing thousands of acres of fallow land. Bankrupt farming operations, unemployed communities. Well you get the picture. That is not what my biggest problem is right now though.

As I stated, I drive a fair amount daily, and I thought to myself that it wouldn't be that bad, cause after all this is in the country. There won't be all those annoying freeway commuters, in a hurry one minute and eating a donut and talking on the phone the next. This will be a calm relaxing drive to and from work, and back and forth to different locations during the day should be just as enjoyable right???

Well.....No wrong. It's a nightmare of stupidity out here on the country roads of California. People don't pay attention to where they are going, they don't pay attention to how fast they are going. Worst of all they don't pay attention to their surroundings. They are usually too busy talking on their flippin cell phones. Even better is when I see them still using those God awful CB radios. Come on people get into the 21st century. these are not a reliable means of communication.

I don't generally use the phone at all in my pickup. I will pull over if I talk. I take the whole thing about not driving and talking on the phone semi-seriously (I don't really like blue-tooth technology). I will finish my conversation and then I can just jump back on the road and get about business. You would think that is simple enough for most people to handle. After all it's not like they are flying down the road. Most of the time, these "farm workers" are either going 10 or 15 mph below the speed limit. I say farm workers because I don't know most of the time if they are the owners of the farm or just a hired hand, so I prefer to lump them all into one big category. That category is basically the annoyances. These are people that drive too slow and swerve on the road cause they don't pay attention to what they are doing while driving.

The other side of the spectrum is the Andretti's of the world. These are the people that drive 15-20 mph OVER the speed limit. These are people that don't generally drive out here in the sticks. They are driving in their BMW/Mercedes SUV or some biofuel crackerbox (no prius out here). They zoom up and down my roads (that's right they are mine Mon-Fri). Don't exclude our state's finest CHP officers. They love to exceed the speed limit, and then have the nerve to pull me over for not making a complete stop at a stop sign in a town of 70 people. BRILLIANT!!!

I have decided to take my bosses advice and do more work from home here on my faithful computer. I can avoid all the hustle and bustle of the country driving (never thought I'd say hustle and bustle with country). The only problem I can find with this scenario is no more donuts for breakfast, no more Mcdonalds for breakfast, and most of all no more BJ's Country Kitchen for breakfast (they have the best biscuits and gravy on the planet). If I can find a way to survive without these oh so necessary evils, I think that I"m gonna be a homebody a lot more often.