When things go...
The driving time from Brownsville to Corpus Christi is right at 2 hours and thirty minutes if the traffic is normal and the wait at the immigration check point just north of Armstrong, Texas is not backed up to badly.
Game starts at ...
The Thursday night poker game starts at 6:00 PM Texas time so if I hustled my way up Hwy 77 I could make it to Corpus Christi in time to get in the poker game. Not staying in Brownsville Thursday night would put me two and half hours closer to home on Friday and make the drive home only four and half or five hours so it was definitely worth leaving town and hoping I could make it in time to play poker.
Normally I drive...
Normally I drive five under the speed limit but seeing that I was racing the clock I was dead nuts on the speed limit and in some places just a few miles per hour over it.
Unscheduled stop...
Raymondville, Texas is about 50 miles north of Brownsville and I ended up having to make an unscheduled stop there in order to have the truck looked at by local auto parts store, the damn little yellow check engine light had come on just as I was about 10 miles south of Raymondville.
Normally I wouldn’t worry about a check engine light coming on and in this case I wasn’t worried but I was concerned. Once you pass Raymondville on Hwy 77 there is nothing in the way of gas stations or mechanic shops for over sixty miles if you break down; so I needed to get that information on what made the light come on.
The truck seemed to be running fine, in fact, I learned that my gas mileage at 75 MPH isn’t any worse than when I run 70 MPH, go figure. I did a post not long ago over on WeKU about gas mileage and saving time. This old truck will get damn near 27 or 28 miles per gallon at 60 MPH but at 70 MPH it drops down to 19.3 MPG.
Had I known I wasn’t saving anything slowing down that extra 5 MPH I would have been spending more of my time singing that Eagles song, Life in the Fast Lane. The left lane is now my friend going forward.
It was a code...
So about that check engine light, it turned out that it was a code that said the mass air flow sensor was fouled up; well it couldn’t be fouled up to badly since the truck was running better than it normally does. So back on the HWY 77 and headed north, I should not have to stop again until I get to the immigration check point just north of Armstrong, Texas.
I was good to...
Seventy five was my number and I had set the cruise control so I was good to go, traffic was fairly light and the weather perfect for driving. I kept the old girl in the left lane pretty much the whole way to just south of Armstrong, there the local sheriffs use Hwy77 as their cash cow to fund the county government and they do a great job of writing those speeding tickets.
In my rear view...
In my review mirror I saw a black car closing down on me pretty fast about just about three miles from where a know sheriff speed trap is usually set up so I moved over to the right lane so I wouldn’t impede this person’s progress.
Maybe even faster...
It was pretty evident that they were in a hurry, and as the car got closer I could see that it had that distinctive Dodge Challenger front end. This car was doing about 85 or maybe even faster and had the dark tinted windows. Really a bad ass looking car and I was thinking to myself that the sheriffs will love seeing this guy come by them doing this speed.
Like a bat out of hell...
The car was only along side of me for about a second, maybe a second and half, but I looked over to try and get a look at the driver but the windows were too dark to see in. Nice jet black Dodge Challenger with the factory magnesium wheels, completely blew right by me and on the back across the spoiler on the deck lid was the word “Sheriff” , I’ll be damned if it wasn’t Johnny Law breaking the law himself. No flashing lights, no siren, obviously not a damn emergency and he was flying like a bat out of hell. Here I was hoping he would get a ticket and he has a whole damn book of them he would just love to give others.
How do these...
About two miles from the immigration check point I saw him in the median taking advantage of the bushes and tall grass just waiting on someone to come driving past like he was just driving two minutes earlier. How do these people sleep at night?
All I wanted...
Since I had slowed down just to be safe I decided to stop at the Armstrong, Texas post office which was on the north bound side of HWY 77. I had never stopped there before and all I wanted was a picture of the place.
I thought it would make for a good steemit post at some point in the future. As it turns out, it won’t. I just knew in my mind that this post office has to be the smallest free standing post office in the United States, it isn’t.
I wasted of couple precious minutes on taking a picture of this little trash post office and I have a dead line if I am going to make the poker game. Luckily for me though the immigration check point wasn’t busy at all and it only took me less than two minutes to get through there.
I don't like...
I don’t like that they stop all vehicles and ask you if you are a U.S. citizen. Even those jackasses asking the questions don’t know that being a US citizen doesn’t have a damn thing to do with being born in a state of the United States of America.
I'm a Texan...
Being born in Texas, Kansas, Ohio, New York or any other damn one of the fifty states doesn’t make you a US citizen. Public education can be thanked for that misconception; I’ll talk about that some other time though. I never do answer their question with a yes, I just tell them, “I’m a Texan.” So far none of them have ever given me any problem with that answer.
Well under way...
So, all of my fooling around and stops got me really pressed for time, I made it to my hotel in Corpus Christi got checked in and in my room. The time was 6:18 PM, the poker game was well under way, but they do have a “late registration” that lasts for twenty minutes and if I can get my computer out and on to the internet in record time I still have a chance at getting in the game.
No one cares who...
I managed to enter the game with about 30 seconds to spare before the registration period ended. I said early that no one cares who finishes second, but in this case I will mention that 
Who finished first...
I may as well mention who finished first too, I mean first place does deserve a mention as well, and seeing how it was this guy writing this story I would really be pissed at him if he left himself out of it. Yours truly, 
I don't make enough...
The other day in a discord channel a person mentioned the Daily Dose SBI give away we hold each Saturday. They know I don’t make enough earnings from my posts to give three shares of SBI away each week, and some weeks it is even more than that if I mention other people by name in the post. So they were wondering how it is I can do it, well now you know.
Keep that a secret...
Let’s just keep that a secret, between us here though, it is a good cause and it is fun to be able to share with you folks so let’s not go and ruin it by telling really good poker players to go sign up over there. Tell all the bad poker players you want to go join the Steem Poker League, just don’t mention it to the good ones.
So timing was everything on Thursday and the timing could not have worked out any better for me and Missy as well. We took away the bulk of the small purse but it all adds up in the end.
Photo Credit: All photos are the property of
