Yes, I’m alive. Frankly, I just haven’t felt like posting much of anything [or doing much of anything else, really]. I feel a bit better today, enough that I’m not groaning at the prospect of going to work in the morning [well, no more than anyone would when they know it's going to be a short week with five days packed into three, that is].

About the only thing I have done this weekend is play NHL 2002 on PlayStation2. Lots of NHL 2002. More than I care to think about, really. And just writing about it makes me want to go fire it up and play another game in the season and get that much closer to World Domination … er, the Stanley Cup. [Well, I think it's the "EA Sports Trophy", but whatever.]

Disturbing realization of the day: our new associate pastor at church reminds me of Jeremy. Well, what Jeremy would be if he were 34, still single [somewhat bitterly so], had a beard, and wore sandals everywhere. Dude, I want to put you two in the same room so bad …

I feel like absolute crap-on-a-stick. The funk is still with me, unfortunately. I’ve let myself be too busy this week, and my sleep deprivation from last week [you can't be a youth counselor on a mission trip and get lots of sleep] has remained.

As I just told Amy, “I am forcing myself not to do house stuff tonight. I am going home and resting. That is all.” She replied, “GOOD.”

I also have the name of the GP that she, Jeff, and Kat [and probably Sean] use. I’m going to live here for the next three years, and I should use one. I think that all I need is rest–after all, I’m feeling better than I did on Saturday, still–but if I still feel like crap on Monday, I’m taking the day off and getting my ass to the doctor.

And if you think me stubborn for not going before now, you’re right. I inherited this from my father. Right, Dad?

Guh. People–especially conservatives–talk all the time about how polls are skewed by their questions. Try this one at FoxNews.com, for instance:

The Pledge of Allegiance

Do you agree with the federal appeals court ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance, with the words “under God,” is unconstitutional?

Yes, the Pledge violates the separation of church and state.

No, “under God” belongs in the Pledge.

Not sure.

Whether or not I agree with the ruling is made irrelevant in this poll by the followon, attendant verbiage. I don’t think having “under God” in there violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment, but the more I think about it, I don’t think “under God” necessarily belongs in the Pledge, either.

I’m tempted to answer “Not sure.”, because my true answer doesn’t lie with either qualifier. But given the political climate that’s present in the aftermath of the 9th Circuit’s ruling, giving a “Not Sure” is probably on the order of voting for a third-party candidate for President.

All of this leads me to something from my lunch yesterday with PJ: he and a mutual friend are taking PY 530: “Psychometrics 3 hrs. History and development of psychological testing with special emphasis given to both theory and process of effective evaluation. Prerequisites: AHS 300 and PY 311.” The reason PJ and Julie are in the class is to remove bias errors in their surveys of students for their research in Engineering Management [of which study of the UAH Integrated Product Teams design class is a large part]. I’m interested in the class because of bias errors in polling.

Now, I have to see if I can fit this class in to my Public Affairs program, because dammit, I’m interested in this stuff, and I can finally take a class with PJ.

Man, I’m just dragging my way through today. It’s not good. I didn’t sleep much [or well] last night. I’m still a bit under the weather.

I’d really love to go home and go back to bed. If I can get some stuff under control today, I think that I just might do that.

In other news, I got a new cell phone today. Yay! Geek boys need geek toys.

[Shut up, Sean and Kat. SHUT UP.]

I got a Motorola V60. It’s a neat little phone. The emphasis for me is on little. It’s not as small as Todd’s Panasonic, but it’s small enough. I like it, and it was half of what I was told last week it would cost me.

I’m not going to drop it in the toilet like Andy did. You are welcome, Heather.

I shudder to think about what the Weblog community is going to have to say about the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling the Pledge of Alleigance as “unconstitutional”. It’s going to run along two roads, I bet:

1. Those who will be happy with the decision because of what they would probably term the “snide, in-your-face attitude of Christians in America today”.

2. Those who will be flamingly unhappy with the decision because of what they will undoubtedly say is “proof that this country is going straight to Hell”.

Hopefully, I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m not happy with the decision, because I think it’s a sop to overly-liberal forces and a denial of a pillar of American culture.

Yes, the Pledge was pushed by Eisenhower and a Congress in the 1950’s that was pretty, um, weird. Yes, “under God” undoubtedly, in most folks’ minds, refers to the Christian conception of God. But is that altogether inconsistent with the principles that this country is founded upon?

I don’t think two words in a rote recitation–”I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. “–violates the premise that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”, as defined in Amendment I of the U.S. Constitution.

There is little doubt in my mind that the influence of religious institutions–especially Christian ones, but also including Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Mormon, and others–is a significant shaping factor of the American polity. The values espoused by men and women of faith have had a significant impact in constructing the underpinnings of our society, and, in my mind, to ignore that influence–or worse, pretend that it doesn’t exist–gives you an incomplete picture of What America Is All About [For Better Or Worse].

The most telling line from the CNN.com story I linked to above is the last: “The 9th Circuit is the most liberal and the most overturned appeals court in the country.” I personallly am not too aflutter about this, although five years ago I’d have been livid.

Now, the question of rote recitation of the Pledge in schools is another matter entirely. From my memories of it–we stopped doing it in fifth grade, from what I can remember–it served to make me ask questions of my parents and teachers about the values that underpinned American society. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. A little rote recitation isn’t a bad thing, and after a while, it also makes some kids wonder why they’re saying it all the time–and when they look into it, they might just learn something.

I bet even the children of the guy who brought the suit can appreciate that.

Oh goodness, Nanook is just so damned cute, it’s not even funny.

I even had him barking at me.

Awwwwwwwwwwww! DOGGIE!

I remember being bored at work. Theoretically, it doesn’t happen right now, because Lord knows we have enough work going on at TBE to keep us all busy.

But I read this essay and guffawed in remembrance!

I found this on alt.books.tom-clancy this morning [yes, reading Usenet at work, beats taking a lunch break]: Villain Supply. A nice chuckle-rending diversion for you.

Well, now that Anthony has moved in and Blake has moved a chunk of stuff, it’s now time for me to start moving more and more services over to Club Todder 3. Of course, Mediacom’s Website is as useless as teats on a boar hog, so this means I get to dig their phone number out of the phone book and call them. Would it kill them to do what Knology does and show availability and price information on their Website? Let’s disregard the fact that you can sign up for service with Knology on their site for a moment–simply knowing what their costs are would be a good thing.

-sigh- Mediacom is, from what I know, the “new guy in town”, battling against Knology [formerly Cable Alabama] and Comcast, both of whom have served this area for a while. When you’re the new guy, you do one of two things to get service: offer competitive prices or offer outstanding customer service. In this market, the latter’s not going to be hard to achieve, but not giving pricing information out there? Yeesh.

If you’re wondering why I’m spending five minutes of my morning spewing vitriol about this, it’s because 1) this is our only option for digital cable and cable-modem broadband that far out in the county and 2) I just read an email from one of my customers and said to myself, “What a flaming idiot.” It’s better to bitch here than bitch at my customer. -sigh-

You’re about to see a greater frequency of posts on IJSM.

You mean it’s possible to have more?

You betcha, Bob.

Who’s Bob?

Never mind.

Anyhow, with the Wondergeeks server [well, it's Gareth's, but most of you don't know him] D.O.A., Brad and I are probably the only ones that can post and be seen. So, as I just told Sean, I feel that it’s my duty to provide my friends with a respite from their boredom:

[11:11] GFM: I guess Gareth’s server blew up?
[11:11] Sean: yeah
[11:12] Sean: he said it was acting funny, tried to reboot it, and it never came back up
[11:12] GFM: Ouch.
[11:13] GFM: That’s so painful, I don’t want to think about it.
[11:14] Sean: yeah, so everyone has been bored with no sites to read, this happened like last thursdat
[11:15] GFM: I will oblige.
[11:15] Sean: oh thanks
[11:16] GFM: I gotsta help out my peeps, ya know.
[11:16] Sean: word to that my brother

Yo.

Well, moving to Club Todder 3: The Country Experience means we have fenced-in areas. With us, that can only mean one thing: dogs!

Anthony’s already moved out to the woods; he got his stuff in last week. I need to head out there tonight and go see what’s up out there. I want to start moving stuff this weekend.

But the main reason I’m posting is so I can show a photo of Nanook, Todd’s Siberian husky puppy. Dude, this thing is cute. Too bad his little sister had a horrible case of worms and didn’t make it.

I am proud to report, however, that Nanook is just so darn cute that even Sarah has been captured!

Everyone now: “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

Well, while I was gone, IJSM’s Weblog [you know it as the Bachelor of Arts in Slackerdom lecture series] was reviewed by The Weblog Review.

Of course, this would happen right as I go on vacation. -chuckle-

I’ve actually been home since just before midnight on Saturday night. However, until now, I haven’t unpacked crap. I decided I’d snag all my email before I head in to work. I feel like crap … I’m still suffering a bit from my sinus infection. I’ll live, though. I better finish reading email before I head in to work.

If you go back through the archives, you’ll see that I have posted the entries as-written during the past week. Hope you enjoy.

Today has been hard. Around 3 a.m. Friday, I felt myself coming down with a sinus infection. Last night, I spent the night alternating between sleeping and blowing my nose. I’ve run a fever most of the day, but it’s nothing unbelievably unbearable. It’s made me irritable, though, which certainly hasn’t made the bus ride home very fun for me or the youth so unlucky as to be riding with me.

Unfortunately, our youth have one traveling shortfall: they fail to realize that compromises have to be made in terms of food stops on long trips such as this. There was much frustration, weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over hitting McDonald’s for dinner … but I guess they’ll get over it. It was starting to frustrate Darin, though.

We’re currently somewhere west of Talladega, Ala. My legs are absolutely shot: between riding in a seat with zero leg room on both legs of the trip, getting a quarter of the seat when Anita would ride with us in Tampa, and all the leg-intensive working we did, my legs ache even when still.

Man, I *am* grouchy, because all I’ve done is bitch, bitch, bitch.

All in all, this has been a really good trip. As you can tell, while I did go get a phone line to plug into the phones at Eckerd, I never did. I’ve been cataloging all the entries as I’ve gone, and I’m going to post them in one fell swoop when I get home. [Funny to write that and realize that this entry won't be read until after the fact, but I do try to take present conditions in consideration when flapping fingers in the Weblog.]

I figure we’re going to get home around 10:30, which means I won’t get to leave until 11:00 or so. This wouldn’t be so bad, except for the drive home and the fact that I probably need to get a box of Kleenex on the way home. Despite all impulses to the contrary, I won’t get a case of beer when I stop.

We’re on the long ride home … and I just saw an RV from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. How do I know? Perhaps it was the bumper sticker: “Say yah to da UP, eh?” They were from McMillan, MI, I do believe. The Looby family was rolling in it, if the back of the RV is to be believed.

Well, we’re moving again, so I should get back to navigating.

Our youth group, especially our boys, think I’ve gone to the Dark Side. They’re right: I have, because I’m a Counselor and no longer a Youth.

It’s funny that they consider me more of a youth than Will, our intern. You see, Will’s a year younger than I am, and he’s from Huntsville and graduated from Grissom High, the same school many of our youth attend. Even so, Will’s “official”; me, I’m just a guy who spends a lot of his free time [and some of his vacation] with the youth group.

Of course, because I’ve gone to the Dark Side, I won’t tell them of our plans for revenge on some small practical jokes they played earlier this week. We’re going through our laundry list of easy-to-pull yet nothing-dangerous-or-harmful practical jokes, trying to come up with an appropriate response. The best response? Probably nothing at all, so they keep on waiting.

Well, I really do feel like one of the youth counselors now. I was talking with Anita during a food break this afternoon at Busch Gardens, and we discussed my hectic schedule. “It’s normal,” she said, “and something I should have done.” She described how she went from school and work and sorority to nothing besides work, calling it “really going downhill”. She continued, “With as much time as you spend with the youth, you just need to look at this as your hobby.”

Thinking on it, that’s as apt a description as any. I often choose the youth over my friends [can I get an amen?!] when it comes to my free time. It’s something I’m very passionate about, and before now, I probably couldn’t have told you why. Now, I can: it’s because I really like working with kids this age for two reasons: 1) it reminds me of what I was like at that age and 2) because, well, I’m at the stage where I want to be settled and married and have kids, and in the meantime, I can act like these are my kids for just a few hours a week.

I probably haven’t mentioned this, but Darin did last night to me: the last five or six months, I’ve really only been the steady youth counselor. Various others of our regulars have had to duck in and out for various reasons, and other than Darin, I’ve been the only constant. I’ve really enjoyed it, and the kids have opened up to me in the meantime.

I just thank my God every time I think about it for the opportunity to work with this group of kids. They’re so much cooler than my own youth group was growing up–and that’s not to knock that group, which was a really good group in their own right. What’s different about this group is its diversity: my home group in Forest did lots of things together in school and at church, but this group does lots of things, from sports to band to choir to JROTC. They’re a smart, talented group of kids.

Just don’t let them know I think so highly of them. They might try to use that on me the next time I plot some evil practical joke …

We worked again today. It was good to work–after all, this is a mission trip, and those are about sweating your fool head off. I did just that–to the point that I was on the road to dehydration. As I was nailing down a cross-brace for a wall section we were building, I felt my head go light and watched the nail move side to side in my field of view. I aimed at the middle of the oscillation, drove the nail home, and went for some water.

I feared that motivating my group might be a challenge. Of the kids I have working under me, I only know one of them decently well–all the kids I know very well are doing roofing, and this jolly fat man isn’t getting up on any rooftops. I thought my lack of familiarity would breed … indifference? … but it hasn’t so far. Unfortunately, it’s led me to rib two of the girls rather mercilessly, but I think they’re going to forgive me for it.

The thing that I’m really finding is how well I’ve been getting to know the other adults on this trip. Coming in, I really only knew Darin, our youth director, well enough to rib him mercilessly. [I've kept that up--while we played volleyball last night, I snapped off a favorite line after a misplay: "Come on, Darin, communicate. Oh, wait, you're married ..."] But during a 14-hour van ride, I got to know one of the mothers quite well, and the other mother and I have shared lots of conversations as I’ve all but sat in her lap while we’ve rode around St. Petersburg.

I guess I should explain that.

We have 22 youth and five adults on this trip. We have two 15-passenger vans, but we removed the back seat from the rental for luggage space. This leaves us 26 seats for 27 folks. Guess who volunteered for the crappy seating job? The way it works is that Anita sits as close to the door as she comfortably can; I perch on what small bit of the seat she leaves me, plant my toes hard into the base of the seat Treva uses while she drives the van, and plant my left knee into Treva’s seat back. It keeps me reasonably stable while we drive, although I feel like I’m sitting in Anita’s lap.

Well, the writing muse is off in the next county. If you saw flooding in Tampa and worried about me [I now have a phone line, but I don't know if I'm going to plug it up tomorrow or not], no problems. We’re down in St. Petersburg, so we had no idea that Tampa even flooded [it's 15 miles easy from here to there]. But with the muse gone–presumably to help some poor soul bail water out of his basement–I’m going to sign off and let the tunes of Pierce Pettis rock me to sleep. Appropriately, the song currently in my playlist is Pettis’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Down In The Flood”.

It’s officially a rainout … the thunderstorms persisted through the morning, and it’s still nasty up north of here in St. Petersburg where we’ve been working, so we’re just going bowling instead. I’m going to see if I can snag that ever-elusive network cable while we’re gone; work voicemails are starting to pile up.

Why am I worried about work on my vacation? -sigh-

It’s rained off and on since 3:00 or so this morning. The thunder is rolling in now; we’ll work in rain, but we don’t work in lightning.

Grrrr. This doesn’t happen on mission trips for me. Grrrr.

Anytime you go away from home, you get a certain amount of frustration from dealing with others that aren’t a part of your group, whether that group is self, self and family/friends, or even larger.

Surely we’ve all seen this ourselves: school trips to a museum where anyone who seeks to walk with our group is regarded at best as an intruder and at worst as a potential pedophile; that geeky couple that wants to walk around with your family on your vacation, as if you’re really interested in their world-record-holding twine ball; or the guys down the hall in the dorm where your youth group is staying that seem hell-bent on beating mercilessly on the doors [and each other] and also seek to keep you up at night past that ethereal “lights out” time that all camps have.

Last night, I yelled at the guys down the hall and downstairs something to the effect of: “Have you ever seen a six-foot, three-hundred-pound youth counselor who hasn’t slept in a day and a half get angry? If you don’t hush up and go to bed, you’re going to see what it’s like firsthand. It’s ugly. GO TO BED.”

Didn’t really stop them, but it abated it somewhat. If we’d had more room in the vans, I would have had my beloved SuperSoakers, which I use as curfew enforcement devices as a youth counselor.

We’re a day gone with our work; we have but two more left. This is so abnormal to me; I’m used to Mission Fest, where we work full days Monday-Thursday and a half-day on Friday. Sure, it’s hot here, but it’s hot in Jackson, too, and we deal with it just fine. Thursday we’re going to hit Busch Gardens [which means I'll do a lot of sitting, as I quite hate roller coasters], and on Friday we’re going to hit the beach [which means I'll do a fair amount of sitting, since I hate saltwater ... but I think we'll get a mad game of Ultimate Frisbee going, which will be cool].

This is half work trip, half vacation. I guess that’s not all bad. Sure, I could use the vacation. I’d rather be working, though. Three days is just enough for me to knock off the rust and get tired enough to really let my guard down. At Mission Fest, I find that Wednesday is the day everyone “gets real”, because the week’s just half over and folks are really starting to wonder why it is they came to work their little butts off when they could be out at the beach or something. I guess I grew up different.

Mental note … push Jackson hard for next year.

Man, this is really making me want to go on down to Jackson next week. If it wouldn’t cause me all sorts of trouble, I think I’d do it out of spite. But I think after 14 hours in the van on Saturday I’ll be thinking a bit differently.

We went out to the beach anyway … it rained a bit, but that’s okay. I’m not going to melt. We’re not hitting The Pier until Wednesday.

Ah well, I’m running out of steam, and my roommate has already bedded down, and hey, the guys down the hall have quieted for a minute. I might just sneak a half-hour of shuteye while my MP3 list plays.

We got to our worksite this morning at a reasonable hour. We’re working at D&D Missionary Homes, which provides a way station [by reservation, for free] for evangelical Christian missionaries when they need to get back to the good old U. S. of A. for a little rest and relaxation or some medical treatment. [Currently, two families are in St. Pete because their patriarchs have an unknown tropical illness.]

Our group was split into smaller groups to work on tasks. A major task involved roofing: either pulling shingles off or adding new ones to the roof. I knew that my big, clumsy self needed to not spend the day on a roof–mainly because I didn’t need to spend my night in the hospital.

Instead, we worked on replacing an appliance shed. This involved pouring a new concrete slab for the shed and then building up framed sections of the walls while the slab set. Halfway through, I thought, “You know, Todd would love the thought of me working with concrete.” So I called him up and said, “Hey, dude, you so need to be here right now. We’re playing with concrete.” He laughed and said he wished he was here.

Sad side note of the morning: Todd had picked up two Siberian Husky puppies, a male and a female, from the local Humane Society this past weekend. Sadly, the female had worms and didn’t make it through the weekend. Todd was understandably bummed, so I’m glad that I gave him a call. [Slacker: it was 9:20 Huntsville time when I called, and he was just leaving for work.]

It rained three different times this afternoon. The first two were brief, cooling sprinkles that lasted five minutes and were never very heavy. The third was an outright downpour at the end of the day that lasted for a good fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, the kids decided afterwards that puddle-jumping would be fun, and one of them found a nail with his foot. Silly Adam.

We’re potentially hitting The Pier, a rather cool mall in St. Pete, tonight for dinner. [We're supposed to hit the beach, but the rain has stayed constant and may wash that out for tonight, which means that we'd then flip-flop with tomorrow night's trip to The Pier.] If we go there, I’m going to hit an electronics shop and get a Cat5 and a phone line and see if I can get hooked up. I need to pay a bill, dammit …

I’m tired. I don’t guess that’s really a complaint … it’s just a fact. More later, maybe when I’m not so tired–or stinky. -sniff- Yeah, a shower would do.

Sober reflection at 6:30 a.m. EDT is always a little fun. You wonder, “Now, why exactly did I drive 14 hours yesterday to sleep in a crappy college dorm room–on the floor, no less, even though I had a ‘mattress’–what was I thinking?” Of course, this is only the sleep-deprived part of my body speaking … even now, the rational part of my brain is leaking through and giving orders.

-yawn-

It’s not bad at all. Were I in Jackson, Miss., and were it a week later, I’d not be in much better condition. I shan’t complain too loudly.

-yawn-

We got in around 7:20 EDT last night. That, in my mind, is excellent, excellent time. It was a pretty easy drive, really; of course, I can say that, not having driven a lick. The laptop was invaluable, although the DVD’s are getting stowed on the return leg. Darin’s right about interaction, although I only had a viewing of _The Others_ because they all but offered me up for sacrifice. Nicole Kidman … yummy.

The fun thing about last night was turning around and hitting the airport. We have lots of athletes in our youth group; two of them were at Birmingham Southern for a basketball camp, and three of them have sporting events next weekend. We spent about 40 minutes here at Eckerd College before Anita Hall and I jumped in her Tahoe and went back up the peninsula to Tampa International to snag Jackie and Casey. Joy, joy, joy.

Sleep came, albeit briefly, not much later. After I found my bedroll, which had made its way to the girls’ dorm. Why does this kind of stuff always happen to me? -shrug-

Mmmmm … I need to take a moment and orient my thoughts towards the challenges of today rather than the complaints of yesterday. Yesterday is immutable; today is not guaranteed to be so.

We stopped in Valdosta, like I expected. Huzzah. I can spot good places to stop; being in the lead car is fun with groups like this, because you end up setting the destinations.

Darin and I talked a bit earlier; he told me to keep the DVD off for a while in an effort to let the group interact. Oh, no problem there; my arm can only take so much laptop-steadying. Besides, they’re playing some card game up there. Not sure what it’s called, really … Peasant? Pheasant? Sounds pleasant.

We’re 20 miles from Florida, the Sunshine State. It is very definitely much warmer this far south. I thought it was hot in Alabama last week; nothing like the heat down here. Whew!

Man, I’m really, really glad that most of my CD collection is ripped to MP3. It makes it quite easy for us to have some low-background noise while we chug along down the road. It’s probably another five hours to our final destination … my back is ready for it.

When it comes down to it, $60 isn’t all that much to pay for a couple hours of a quiet van ride.

The power inverter I bought last night at Wal-Mart doesn’t kick out enough juice to run the laptop at 100% power. I found this out around 5:45 this morning, when I realized that the laptop was running on its batteries. Oops.

When we last stopped–oh, don’t ask me where, but it was Exit 201 on I-75 South in Georgia, between breakfast in Pell City and wherever it is we’re stopping for lunch [and since we just passed Tifton, I'm betting that we're going in all the way to Valdosta]–we hit a truck stop. Knowing truck stops, I figured I’d head for wherever I saw CB equipment. Sure enough, I found a 300W power inverter. That’s much more than the 90W my laptop adapter draws to run at full power and/or charge the battery.

We just got finished watching Men in Black, and now that the pillow pile to my left has diminished, I’ve snagged the laptop back to peck an entry. I don’t know when I’ll get to post this–like an idiot, I not only left the phone patch cable but also the Cat5 network cable. This is what you get when you begin packing at 2:20 when you’re supposed to be there at 3:00. One of these days, you’d think that I’d learn to plan ahead.

Wait, I’m the Dean of the Indiana Jones School of Management. Never mind …

I didn’t leave too much, actually: a belt, sunscreen, my MP3 player [which Lauren moved around 2:00 when she, Blake, Tim, Tim's girlfriend, and Brian all showed up to watch Blackhawk Down], and the aforementioned cables are all I’ve noticed so far. No biggie–I’ve got the important stuff, save for sunscreen, which is a must. Other folks forgot stuff, too, and we’re probably making a Wal-Mart run after a while.

You may think that $60 for a 300W power inverter is an unwise spending choice. You haven’t spent eight hours in a van with a bunch of teenagers lately, have you? I have. It was worth every penny. It’s also got a hardwire kit, so I can put this thing in my truck back there with the subwoofer and all the other cool stuff I’m about to dump back there. More power, ruh-ruh-ruh.

More later when I have another chance to type. I think I’m going to talk to Treva for a while … she’s driven the whole way and probably wants some company.