We see funny (and interesting) stuff

Although I've been trying to catch photos of the funny signs we find, I can't always get a good shot.  Sometimes I'm just too tired to capture it.

In Albuquerque, there was a hand-painted advertisement at a freeway exit that was quite enticing:
BATES MOTEL
Mother's Homestyle Cooking
Every room has a Shower
Family-Run
Follow signs


When we first crossed into Oklahoma ranch land, there was a Burma Shave-style sign:
I Scream
You Scream
We all Scream
For pork loins


As we were leaving Pawhuska, OK - which is one of the larger towns (ie, not a ghost town), there was a white house with a fence around the yard, right on main street.  On the front door was posted:  PRIVATE PROPERTY.
It seemed like a touchy subject, so I didn't take a picture.

Almost all of the small towns in Texas and Oklahoma have large signs as you enter city limits, that regale visitors with past sports glories.  Usually they are quite large, like 10' x 10'.   "Welcome to Pond Creek - home of the 1990 state wrestling champions."  "You are entering HORNET territory - boy's state track champions 1986, 1987, 1989."   Some even list the names of the kids on the teams.  Like the 1962 championship baseball team of Laverne.


Riding along for hours, I need entertainment.  I'm glad we're riding at this time of year, because the weather isn't too bad, and everything is as green as it gets.  Everything is blooming;  all the animals have babies.  There is activity and the scenery is beautiful.  Sweating is also distracting.


Yesterday I was riding past a farmhouse several miles from town.  A bird whipped out of the mailbox in front of me as I was chugging along.  I stopped to look in, and there was a nest of tiny newly-hatched babies.  I tried to take a picture, but I couldn't make it come out right.  (I swear, they were still alive when I left.)


We talk to people to find out about what's going on in the area sometimes.  We talked to a trucker at the saltwater tanks that were painted with the Peanuts characters out in the middle of the fields.  He was filling his tanker with salt water to deliver to the natural gas field pumps.  When they drill to get the gas, there is water on top of the gas and it rushes up to the surface.  So they pump salt water down first because it's heavier and it holds down the ground water so they can go past it and get to the gas.

We also found that May is wheat harvest hearabouts.  The neighbors get together and help each other roll the cut wheat into great rolled bales.  The women drive out with meals for everybody and they have a tailgate party and then get back to work.  They keep working past dark because you never know when it's going to rain.  The huge trucks and combiners have lights.

The oil fields are being upgraded and Conoco Phillips is putting up workers at all the small hotels and rv campgrounds.  They're making extra money by working in the fields away from home.  Shifts work around the clock and pass each other in the breakfast rooms at the Best Western, some on their way to bed and some on their way out to the field.  Their huge boots are in the hallway outside their rooms.

I have been listening to audiobooks, and off and on I listen to some music, but I only wear one earbud, because it doesn't seem safe to block your hearing when you're the smallest fish in the current.  Plus, it's illegal (as I point out to Peter almost daily.)  So, the music is sometimes suboptimal, if it's in stereo.

Listening to something really helps with endurance.  But I can't do it every day.  So I do things to keep busy, like count the number of dead animals and discarded gloves.  It's instructive.  I've learned that truckers must think that work gloves are disposable.  Also, in Oklahoma, work gloves are available in children's sizes.  I've also found out that truckers seem to perform their hygienic activities on the road, as evidenced by prodigious quantities of tissues, eye-drop bottles, empty prescription bottles, combs, brushes, dental floss picks, q-tips, and unsanitary Gatorade bottles (re-filled).  (If you get my drift.) 

One could study their culture from their garbage.  If one was so inclined.