Since it was such a lovely day for driving today, I decided to go take care of a customer in New Haven. Initially I didn't want to go, but they were having problems with their router since yesterday afternoon and were rather anxious to get online - a feeling I know all too well.

Traffic was pretty light, considering Tropical Depression Hanna was on the way to destroy life as we know it. I had also just had the struts in the car replaced to alleviate a very expensive sound coming from their general vicinity, so I felt that I should do what I could to pay them off somehow.

About half way through West Haven - ironically near the location of the "Vagina" billboard * - I was passed by an SUV.

As you can see, it's a Hummer H3, one of the more fuel efficient vehicles in the Hummer line. Normally, the black ones don't look to bad, but there was something different about this one. I don't know if it was the brush guards, the "lived in" look that it had (like it had actually been driven off-road), or the vague sense that whoever was driving it had actually served their country and had spent more than a few months behind the wheel of a military Hummer. What I do know is that it stood out - more than a vehicle that gets approx. 14 mpg doing 70+ down the highway does. What you can see in the photo is an arrow pointing to where their lone bumper sticker is.

What does the bumper sticker say?

Now, I shouldn't have been surprised that the person driving the fuel-inefficient vehicle on the road was a Republican, but somehow, I still was. From what I understand, a rather large percentage of the people serving in the armed forces are Republican, despite the fact that their Commander In Chief keeps putting them in harms way. Guess I still hold out hope for some people out there to have a decent head on their shoulders.....

* When the "Vagina Monologs" came to New Haven, they paid for a billboard along I-95 in West Haven that said VAGINA in huge letters, and monologs much smaller. Obviously done to get attention, it made headlines across the state, and, to some extent, across the region. Panty-twisted conservatives across the nation got their panties twisted even more tightly, and there was much griping, complaining and gnashing of teeth. Jen and I went to the show and had a wonderful time. (top)