Toll Roads

Weekends are hard when the hubby is out of town. It is a long two days without another adult to shake things up a bit (or at least to take over some of the disciplining).

I did make it out of the house for a few hours without the kids this afternoon. Sarah and I went and hit four restaurants for her review gig with AOL. It was fun and we had some tasty and cheap sushi along the way.

We took the toll road all the way to 59 and that got me thinking about how much I enjoy the toll road. I am a pretty impatient person, and sitting in traffic is one of my all time least favorite things to do. In comes the toll road. Quite often in Houston the major highways will be backed up and the toll road will remain fairly normal. When we moved back to Houston and the boys had baseball games all over the city, I went down and got two Toll Tags for our cars. This just heightens the whole toll road experience. You don’t even have to slow down to pay, just whiz right through. Plus, it is 25 cents cheaper with the tag! It is like you are part of an elite club saying, “Mrs. Brenner, you appear to be in a hurry, please drive right on through.” Okay, that may be a little bit dramatic, but I do seriously LOVE the toll road concept.

My mom tells a great toll road story that happened right after she and my dad were married. They were headed to their honeymoon (more on that later) when they came upon a toll road. My dad didn’t want to pay the 10-cent toll, so they drove around for the next hour trying to find an alternate route. Back to the honeymoon part...I am not sure it can really be called a honeymoon. They spent the entire summer working on a lookout tower in a National Forest. They shared a twin size cot between the two of them…you know, the wake up the other person so you can turn over kind. Mom says at one point she walked for a couple hours trying to find her way out of there, but had to give up and walk the couple of hours back.