TO RIDE A ROMBOID STRIP

There wasn�t anything for me to do but sit there and
twiddle my thumbs. I was bored to tears. My youngest
son and his girl sat up front (driver and co-driver
respectively) and that was just too far away from me to
make decent conversation without shouting my fool head
off. Not that they wanted to hear anything I had to say
these days. I wasn�t on their wave length anymore. So,
all I could do to while away the miles was amuse myself
with my memories and thoughts.


How strange this world is! I seem to have come full
circle, only the circle is twisted the way a romboid
is. Here I am, sitting in the back of a Camper truck on
my way to the woods, when a few years ago that little twit
driving, scrabbled around in the back seat while I sat
up front!


Tch, tch, how fate must laugh at the way it dances our
roles around. One minute we�re leaders and the next
we�re the led.


As the holiday crowds sped past my window going the
opposite way I wondered what an Alien being must think
of us. I could visualize the reports he would turn in
to his Superiors:


"Well, Boss, it�s like this; for no apparent reason
that we could find out, about 20% of the Population of
one town will pack up and exchange places with another
town. But there seems to be a taboo against them using
each others nests and so they are forced to use a
temporary shelter for the length of their stay. After a
certain period of time they all return home again.
How long do they stay?"


"Well, as near as we can see this seems to be determined
by anger. Our opinion is that the males force this trip
on their mates and children in order to stimulate them
to extreme emotions."


"For instance, in one family that we observed they were
quite lethargic prior to their exchange trip, but after
a short period of time they began to get emotional. As
soon as the emotions reached the required peak,
(crying, screaming, swatting of young, bashing of
noses, etc.) and the goal was reached, they packed up
and returned to their own nests. After a certain period
of time they would return to the lethargic state and
then begin it all over again. Some members of the
species seem to be very underdeveloped and repeatedly
fail to reach the desired goal and are forced to
repeat it on a constant basis. We actually recorded one
family group that made this kind of journey 12 times in
one year. With each failure the male tried a different
locality, going farther and farther afield with each
try, until finally on his last trip we recorded success
for him. His mate finally began crying, and his young
succeeded in giving each other swollen noses and
damaged eyes. At this sign of success he promptly
packed up and returned home and hasn�t budged since. We
were quite happy for him, Sir."


"How are you doing back there, Mom? You�re awfully
quiet." called out my Son from the drivers seat.


"Oh, just fine, Son, just fine." I felt a little
sheepish as the kids turned around and smiled at me. My
gawd! Had I been talking to myself? Memory flashed me
back in time to another trip I had been on where I had
turned around to catch one of the children deep in a
daydream and talking to some imaginary friend.


There was that crazy romboid strip again.


If you�re not familiar with a Romboid, the quickest way
to describe it is to take a strip of paper one inch
wide by eight inches long, one side of which is green
and the other blue. Bend it into a circle at the same
time twisting one end so that you are stapling or
gluing a green side to a blue side. Now start cutting
this strip down the middle. Hah! Thought you were going
to get two circles didn�t you! Well, you don�t! You get
another larger circle that�s twisted. And if you cut it
again you get two circles that are hopelessly tangled
together. However if you staple the join three times
and start cutting between one and two and then through three,
surprise; one small circle and one large circle and yet
you never split them apart when you were cutting, did
you? And of course they are still Romboids - a twisted
shape. Or loop.


From my seat in the back I could look out the window
between the two up front and see the road stretching
away in crazy ups and downs and twists and turns. I
knew my son was a good, safe driver but it is a gut
churning experiance to sit and watch and not have
control of the wheel.


Whew! He took that corner a little too fast I�m sure.
Good Lord! Now we�re on a straight strech and he�s
slowed to a crawl. Ah, yes. He�s reacting to his speed
around that last bend. I�ve done that myself. Or is it
all just my change in perspective?


I was back in time again and reliving a stretch of road
in Origan. All the way down the drive to San Francisco
my Husband had done the driving. He hadn�t trusted me
to drive. "It�s too busy." he said. Now we were off the
big, safe free-ways and on the old, two lane, narrow,
winding, potholed road of the coast highway going back
home. It was not too busy and he was letting me drive
for a change.


His lack of trust had its affects on me; I was nervous.


I thought I could cruise along at a nice leasurely 50
mph so everyone could enjoy the view of the Ocean on
our left. Not so! Cars began piling up behind me. Where
did they all come from all of a sudden? Soon I was up
to 60mph on this winding old road and they were still
trying to pass me. All along this stretch there were no
shoulders to speak of. I lost most of them when we
finally went through a small village, but as soon as I
hit the other side a huge truck came up behind me and
rode my tail.


We were heading inland now and there were no shoulders
on the road for me to pull off. Traffic came towards me
often enough and around bends so that the truck behind
couldn�t pass. After leaving the village behind I was
in a 45mph zone but the truck behind had forced me to
50, now he was pushing me to 55 and I was helpless to
do much about it. He was too close to even allow me to
hit the brakes and warn him that I was slowing down and
yet the narrow road and the curves were becoming
hairraising.


My husband sat tensed up beside me, gripping the dash
and looking at the truck behind and the road ahead in
turn.


The kids were silent in the back seat as if they too
could feel the danger and were afraid to distract me.


Mile after mile I drove that unfamiliar winding, narrow
highway, passing speed signs 10 to 20 miles lower than
the speed I was going. Our car was an Oldsmobile �88�,
huge and fully automatic, but it took up all the road
there was on my side and needed a good shoulder width
to pull over onto. There weren�t any cars coming the
opposite way any more but the bends were too often to
allow the huge truck behind to pass.


It was getting on to dusk and the forests on either
side were closing in and adding to the twilight. My
right knee was beginning to tremble and my palms were
sweaty on the wheel. I didn�t have time to think- only
drive- and keep ahead of the crazy bastard behind me. I
was so angry by now and afraid for my kids I was hoping
to see him fail a curve and go off the side of the
road.


No hope of that! He drove with the skill of a man who
knew every inch of the road ahead. But I didn�t know
the road ahead! Nor Bob. That was what scared the heck
out of me.


At last I rounded a curve and there ahead of me was a
long grade up a hill with wide shoulders, and no cars
coming the other way. When I pulled off to the side he
passed and I could see his smart aleck grin. Then I
knew that what had happened had been deliberate and not
done out of ignorance. I hated that senseless idiot so
much at that moment that if I�d had a gun I would have
blown his tires out and never regretted it for an
instant. I thought of the danger my children had just
gone through. The old car. The tires. I wondered how
many cars had been forced off the roads by idiots like
him and no one ever knew they had been the cause.


As I sat there remembering I wondered how one could let
people know what happened if they did go off the road.
Have a trip book and write the license down of
tailgaters? Then cross them out if you make it? Not
bad...?


I glanced at the two in front and noticed we were
rounding the bend that led down to the valley floor
near Harrison lake. It was a beautiful sight. The farms
and meadows were cut by rivers that sparkled in the sun
or flowed smoothly like ribbons of green and blue silk
threading the landscape. I also noticed I had inched my
body closer to the left side of the van because the
road dropped away on the right. Oh Sure! As if that
would keep us away from the edge.


Colleen sat peaceful and relaxed in the front seat with
a smile on her face. I must be getting nervuos with old
age. Rob seemed to be going just a little too fast
down this hill for my comfort. That curve he just took
seemed a wee bit too close to the edge of the shoulder.
I visualized what would happen if we hit the rough
shoulder at this speed and wondered what it would be
like to sail over the edge of the cliff out into
space.Ugh, what a horrible thought on a lovely day like
this.


That was what made me go back in time to when we had
been on a trip to Yakima, Washington. We had just left
the Moses lake area and were traveling from there to
Yakima when we passed through a small town on the
Columbia River called Ellensburgh. Our only road map
showed that the road from there to Yakima passed along
the river and while it didn�t give the milage it was
the same distance almost as the drive to Moses lake. We
had done that in an hour so we felt that we would get
to Yakima in about the same time or maybe a wee bit
longer.


As we drove through the small town I noticed signs on
the gass stations that said last chance for gas before
Yakima. I thought that was strange but I put it down to
the American method of getting a buck. After all why
should people be that concerned? It wasn�t far away. I
trusted Bob�s judgement about stocking up on gas when
the car was low. After all, he was the driver. Still,
it bothered me.


We left the small town behind and travelled through
forests, farms, and every once in a while we could see
the river. We were still on the flatish area going up
gradually. Then we came to one stretch where we
travelled beside the river. It didn�t look like what I
had imagined the Columbia to look like and I mentioned
this to Bob. That�s when he told me I was reading the
road map wrong. I looked at the map again. He was
right! I became engrossed in the map for awhile and
didn�t notice the silence and when I looked at him at
last he was staring into the rear view mirror at a big
truck riding our tail.


That was when I began to realize that for awhile now
the sound of big trucks passing us on the way down the
hill had been going on around me. My there were a lot
of trucks. All in a hurry. There were trucks in front
of us and trucks behind us, and trucks zooming past us.
Fruit trucks, the big refrigerated kind. They were
coming from Yakima and heading into the Valley or going
back to Yakima empty I suppose. And all of them were in
a hell of a hurry to get where they were going.


On some of the curves they came far over on our side
and we were now driving close to the edge of cliffs an
awful lot of the time. Or they were crowding us from
behind on any down grade. But most of the time we were
heading up small hills always going up. And then they
tailgated until we were all on the edge of our seats
with nervous tension wondering if they were going to
ride right over us. Mile after mile this kept up. When
it got dark it became a nightmare for me. I worried
about the children all the time but I couldn�t stop
myself from cursing the trucks. We had been driving for
two solid hours and it was dark as pitch along the
road. It must have been a strain on Bob because we
hadn�t stopped at Ellensburgh at all and he had been
driving for quite a while now but there just wasn�t any
place to pull over or stop.


It frightened me out of my wits when the trucks took a
chance and passed us every time they got a chance. We
would breath a sigh of relief when they made it; as
much for their safety as for the temporary relief of
getting them off our backs for a short space of time.
But it was never long before another one crept up
behind us. And we were not going slow!


It was three long hours before we came down into a
lower area and the roads where a bit wider with
sometimes a shoulder to move onto to let them pass. We
were beginning to wonder when the winding road we were
on would head into Yakima. Finally we hit a huge wide
freeway and travelled down it for a couple of miles
before I could persuade Bob he was headed the wrong
way. As it was late at night and no one was around he
made a U turn on the freeway and headed back. The tank
had been reading empty for quite awhile and we were
scared of running out on this deserted stretch. At
last we came to the outskirts of the area of Yakima and
found a gas station empty.


Before filling the tank Bob had the man measure the
thing to find out how much gas was left. The man shook
his head after we told him about our ride and told us
we had only about a cup of gas left in the bottom of
the tank.