Wal-Mart

I hate Wal-Mart. Which is funny if you know my sister who couldn’t live without it. It has to do with the fact that I’ve never been in a) a clean Wal-Mart,  or b) met a Wal-Mart associate who is anything less than miserable and has anything but the highest contempt for their job. But this post doesn’t really have anything to do with Wal-Mart. Not really… A little backstory if I may… so, when I was in High School I lived in one town and worked at El Chico in another town, about 20miles away. Now, I’ve always been exceptionally bad at estimating distances, weight, time… you get the gist. So, one day in 1996 I leave Copperas Cove High School, don my tex-mex smelling uniform, hop in my ‘89 Ford Escort (sans AC), and head to El Chico… only to run out of gas. WHAT THE?!?! Now then, this was before every 8 year old had a cell phone so I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I pulled over and I’m sure just kind of stood there on the side of the road like a chump. Eventually a very nice, older man pulled over to help me. He had a phone, I called my dad and explained my circumstances. I don’t remember my dad being overly impressed with my situation, but he at least agreed to bring me some gas. He may have even mentioned making me pay him back for it… I wouldn’t doubt it. If I had to guess, he probably showed up with receipt in hand. Ha! Anyhoo… I explained to my dad that I was “just past the Super Wal-Mart - you can’t miss me”. Well, turns out… some 90mins later when he found me… that I was more like 7 or 8 miles PAST the super Wal-Mart. This has since become quite the catch phrase in our family and even earned me a gas can, map, and other car gadgets for Christmas that year.

Well, fast forward 13 years to this morning. If I haven’t mentioned it to you before I have taken up bicycling. This morning I got up, donned my super cool cycling gear, and hopped on. Headed down some obscure county road… which dead-ended into another county road. Figured that it was my best bet to head in the direction that I figured would lead me home. (I know, I could have just turned around and headed back the way I’d come, but where’s the adventure in that?!) So I do this. I head down this second obscure county road until it dead ends… into a major highway. You guessed it. Just past super Wal-Mart.

Not sure what the mileage on that trip was, I want to go out and map it with my odometer on my car, but it took me a little bit of time to get home. But, I did it!! And I think I only got honked at once… numerous cuss words and fingers flipped my way I’m sure though.