Slight Detour – November 2021
My wife and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary with a road trip to the Black Hills. It was the farthest north or west she’d ever traveled. Even though we were most definitely in “vacation mode,” the “trucking journalist” part of me never seems to take a day off.
For instance, when a flatbedder hauling a giant wind turbine blade was making a wide left turn at our exit for lunch in Gretna, Neb., I made my wife get plenty of pictures with her cellphone. It was a seriously impressive display.
Another thing I noticed driving through Cornhusker country was a DOT scale house on U.S. Highway 77, south of Winslow. This particular coop happened to be in the median of the highway, to trawl for northbound and southbound truck traffic.
It actually seemed kind of ingenious to a guy who is used to seeing matching scale houses on either side of the interstate. Struck me as kinda efficient to build only one house instead of two
A trucker hauling a windmill blade executes a precision left turn onto U.S. Highway 6 north near Gretna, Neb. (Photo by Katie Grisolano)
Only drawback I could see was the trucks having to run in the left lane for the “weigh in motion” sensors and to make the exit to the scale house. Some states aren’t keen about having trucks in the hammer lane.
What do you drivers think? Ever been to one of those median-style coops? How’d you like it? Drop us a line and let us know. In the meantime, here’s more whimsy from the road.
Michigan woman 1; Parking cop 0
A Michigan woman with 14 parking tickets won a major decision in a dispute over whether the town where she works violated the U.S. Constitution by chalking her car tires without a search warrant.
Alison Taylor’s lawyer said the Fourth Amendment’s ban against unreasonable searches was triggered when a Saginaw parking enforcer applied chalk marks and returned two hours later to see if the car still was there.
Saginaw cited an exception to the Fourth Amendment, but a federal appeals court said it doesn’t fit. The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 in Taylor’s favor, finding that “tire chalking is not necessary to meet the ordinary needs of law enforcement, let alone the extraordinary.”
Taylor’s attorney wants to make the lawsuit a class-action open to other drivers whose tires were chalked in Saginaw even if they didn’t get a ticket. There are also similar lawsuits pending against Bay City and Ann Arbor. Decisions by the Sixth Circuit set legal precedent in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Who says you can’t fight City Hall?
Banana-rama
Everyone knows the old saw, “When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.”
But one Florida community is putting their own twist on it. Or “split,” if you prefer.
A man in Fort Myers decided that if the city wasn’t going to fill a pothole, he would do it himself. With a banana tree. Right smack dab in the middle of the road.
The Johnny Bananaseed of this story, Bryan Raymond, told USA Today that he’s tired of fixing the potholes in front of his business, so he planted the tree in one to call attention to the issue.
The city, for its part, says the road is privately owned, meaning the potholes there are not repaired by municipal crews but by the road’s owners.
Truckers traveling near U.S. 41 South in Fort Myers may be able to catch a glimpse of the tree, which is planted in the middle of Honda Drive.
Moo-ving violation
Every trucker probably has an interesting answer to the question: “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen in the backseat of someone’s car?”
Passersby at a Wisconsin McDonald’s now have a story of their own after witnessing a cow in the backseat of a car going through the drive-thru lane.
Video of the incident shows a patron at the Golden Arches rolling through with three calves in the back seat. The driver had just purchased them from a fair.
Maybe the driver thought the three youngsters needed a Happy Meal?
Durian and driving
And finally, you’ve probably heard that eating poppy seeds can bring about a positive drug test – but here’s a new one. We’ll let Land Line Now’s News Anchor Scott Thompson explain.
It happened in China, where a man was driving along, eating fruit, as one is prone to do, and minding his own business.
Until the police lights came on.
The cops pulled him over for suspected drunk driving and gave him a Breathalyzer test on the spot. Sure enough, it came back positive. You can hear the suspect protesting his innocence on police body cam, saying he had only eaten a fruit called the durian.
While most cops might have dismissed that as a “dog ate my homework” type of excuse, these officers, to their credit, were curious. So they decided to test it out right there on the scene.
One of them ate some of the fruit, took the Breathalyzer, and waddya know? It came back with blood alcohol level of 0.36. To confirm, they gave the man a blood test as well. It came back clean.
The driver was off the hook, minus the time spent pleading his case. Less defensible, perhaps, is his affection for durian, the smell of which some have likened to hot garbage, sweaty gym socks and rotten meat. LL