I am Driven Driving Along I-90

Everything Learned About Interstate Driving I Learned While Driving to South Dakota on Vacation

Wow, what a mouthful. Yes, even I, the oldest Neo Con on the Web, can learn about interstate driving while on a family vacation. The 14 hours in the white minivan (it’s the law in Naperville to drive a white minivan) provides quite a classroom environment for re-learning driver’s education.

Here some of the PROFOUND things that I learned while driving to South Dakota from ILL-IN-Noise, mostly along I-90.

• The hardest miles are the 1^st 100
• Most of the cars on I-90 in SD are from MN.
• There are 400 signs for Wall Drug heading west bound on I-90 to Rapid City and only 10 heading east bound from Rapid City
• When your minivan gas gauge is on ¼ tank left, the closest gas station is NOT close enough for comfort. Especially in the freakin desert!
• The average cruising speed (cruise controlled of course!) in SD is 87 ½ mph. A white minivan can actually cruise at any speed over the speed limit that the driver wants, because there are no state patrol cars in SD on I-90.
• You know you are actually in SD and out of MN because the wind mills for electricity have stopped spinning
• Even the speed limit for construction zones are 65 mph in SD
• A good day is when you don’t drop the stuff from your sandwich on your shirt and pants when your eating and driving
• The most dangerous person on I-90 is that jerk who is driving with 2 fingers from only one hand, talking on the phone and has his dog head hanging out the window. (yes, even going 80 mph the dog is hanging out the window)
• St. Christopher medals are a good thing
• The difference between male and female drivers are: Males (DH) don’t use cruise control (it’s only for wimps) Females (me) love cruise control and set it way above light speed
• In a drought situation (SD area has a drought sit) even a few drops of rain is welcome
• It’s mostly uphill to Keystone SD
• Truckers like to watch what’s on the DVD screen to judge what type of person you are
• One can only sing “On top of spaghetti” 10 times without someone hitting you
• Rapid City is in the Mountain Time Zone, so you pick up an hour
• Most drivers will use signals, sometimes even turning signals
• Be Prepared to listen to endless driving instructions from the dopey GPS voice - yeah, I know, exit right and drive 493 miles to destination….blah, blah, ding, ding, off route, off route, recalculating, ding, ding, lost satellite signal, ding, ding, arriving at destination in 100 feet.
• All the bikers on I-90 are from IOWA.
• SD only allows Western and sometime Country music to be played by radio stations
• SD rest stops are pretty clean and have POWER Blaster hand dryers. We washed our hands 4 times just to get blasted by these babies!
• It’s easier to sleep in the minivan on the homebound trip, because you are too excited on the outbound trip to close your eyes and rest even for a minute.
• You can only eat fast food (it’s the law in SD) while driving I-90
• Bugs will hit your windshield, so have plenty of windshield wash
• Do not try to lower the back of your seat to 180 degrees while driving, it really pisses off your DH
• Objects in the mirror appear closer than they are

To get another view of this post, take the high road to my Driving I-90 is Insanity Yahoo 360 blog.