Or should that be, When the Sacred Transmission Dies? (Yeah, I think the regular question mark looks funny next to the italicized text, too, but that is what I'm trying to say)  Yesterday was a good day.

Friday August 25

• Noon-ish: Wake up, walk the dog, leave town [town being Athens, GA]
• 3-ish: Get to Todd's house, leave immediately to continue the search for a new LynxDGS Trailer-pullin'-truck
• 4-ish: Be hideously disappointed with the interior layout of the F-650, similarly, be tremendously unimpressed by the Sterling bigger truck's interior and lack of a factory built crew cab
• 5-ish:  Leave the truck place, head for the best restaurant in Atlanta, Los Rayos, which is on Chamblee-Tucker between Peachtree Industrial and Buford highway
• 5:30-ish: Realize we don't have time for Los Rayos, head for a chicken place instead
• 6-ish:  Pick up Andrew and Amy, along with their cooler, at Perimeter Mall
• 7:30-ish:  Be allowed into Chastain Park amphitheater for the John Prine/Richard Thompson concert
• 8:45-ish:  Be pretty disappointed by Richard Thompson's performance
• Until 11-ish:  Be pretty happy with John Prine, who was awesome

Saturday August 26

• 1-ish (that's AM, by the way):  Decide to go to Nashville to look at this Peterbilt truck that might work really well for us
• 1:03-ish:  Print directions to Cedar Hill and Two Rivers in Nashville (Cedar Hill for the challenge, Two Rivers in case we're feeling lazy and just want to throw)
• 1:05-ish: Realize the truck is "On its way back from a truck show" and might not be there
• 1:10-ish:  Go anyway.  Doug drives, which is fitting in a way because his transmission (isn't the 3rd person great?) is dying and it was an unhappy transmission that nudged us towards a new truck
• 3-ish:  Get almost to the Tennessee border and see a 24-hour Freightliner place
• 3:01-ish:  Stop at the 24-hour Freightliner place
• 3:20-ish:  After being impressed by the trucks we move inside to be impressed with the vending machine selection.  I have a cheeseburger.  That doesn't even suck.
• 5:30-ish:  Get to Nashville, notice the Mack and International places near the Peterbilt place.  Go talk to this mechanic guy who's cool and apparently would rather talk to us than work
• Sometime in the really early morning/late night-ish:  Eat unnecessary breakfast at Waffle House in an effort to kill an hour until the sales guys come in
• About half an hour later:  Realize we had to kill yet another hour because Nashville is not in the timezone that god intended and we would be forced to live the six o'clock hour yet again
• 8-ish:  Todd goes and talks to sales dudes, I sleep in the car
• Not long enough after 8:  The car starts to get hot, I wake up, Todd comes back.  We don't like the interior, it ain't comfortable.  
• All through the next hour-ish:  We drive through godawful traffic and sit and sit and sit and crawl and sit and find nothing that looks interesting
• Later:  We head south, having not played any disc golf, back to the Freightliner dealer near Chattanooga
• More-than-the-two-hours-or-so-it-should've-taken-us-ish:  Dude, traffic. Construction. Accident. Construction. Construction.  We get to the place about 1:30.
• Forty minutes later:  There's only one sales guy there.  He's with a customer. There's another customer in line behind him.  Which means in front of us.  We wait and talk to the friendly receptionist with poor hearing who has her Bible and 2 associated texts open on her desk.  She doesn't like the computerized phone system so I tell her about my Aunt Jean who used to be a phone operator in New York and how she had to do the cable plugging thing. Of course, I have no idea whether she actually ever did the cable plugging thing and suspect she might not have, but it was a good story and the receptionist lady enjoyed it.  And Aunt Jean's cool.
• Whoops, this should be under the previous time slot:  We get in to see him, he gives us a key to go drive the truck.
• Keep on moving:  It's loud.  Very, very loud and unpleasant.  It has air-ride seats which move an awful lot.  It has no power.
• Back at headquarters:  We tell them what we think.  They look puzzled.  The dude suggests we drive another of the same truck, maybe that one had problems.  We agree.
• Uh-huh:  It was a lot better.  Lots o' power.  Less noise.  But still.  Really. Really. Noisy.
• I'm not sure, maybe 3-ish?:  We get home, mainly because with 30 miles to go I retire as driver at exactly the 500 mile mark for the trip.  We would doubtless be dead right now had I not done so.  My only regret is the Heath-Klondike bar I ate in an attempt to wake up.  
• 6:  I sleep at my parents house.
• 10-ish:  I awake.  I drive home.  I listen to AM radio and look for faraway stations, which I haven't done for years (I always like the manual dial better for that than the digital, there was something artistic to it, a nudge here, a shibble there, you get it to come in ok).  I hear a Cincinnati station doing the Reds game.  I hear a St. Louis station doing the news.  I love AM radio.
• 11:30-ish:  I'm home.  That was over 600 miles, if you're counting.  

Sunday August 27

• 2 AM-ish: Now I'm wide-friggin-awake because of my four hour nap and I'm going to be awake all night again.  Wonderful.