So Thursday night was ugly and it put me in an awful mood as you may know from the big story in Headlines. To top it off, my phone was low on power. I decided to use the car-based-cigarette-lighter recharger I bought a while back. It works better when I drive on the highways has been my experience and it led to me changing my route from the housesitting place to my house. I hopped on to 183 South, hooked around to MOPAC, no sweat. Course, in my ongoing anger over the Kenny-Wife situation, I turned off the “paying attention to MOPAC” element of my brain. I completely missed the last free exit on MOPAC North as I turned into the first 50-cent exit. TXDOT did a swell job on this: coins only (I had none), a TXDOT pass (never had a need) and an empty toll both. Seems they never heard of a debit card option for those who don’t need to carry cash anymore. Gunning the lane wouldn’t be wise. I saw the cars going through the pass lane getting zapped with a flash; probably takes a picture of the license plates in case the driver doesn’t pay and I’m sure the fine is hefty.
Then a car was behind me. I went back and explained to the driver and his passenger, “Hello, I’m a complete moron having a rotten evening and by the way, can I have 50 cents?” Okay, not that yet it might as well have been such a statement. They willingly gave me the money, saying it was no big deal. However, I felt no good deed should go unrewarded. I ran back to the car and gave them one of my USB memory sticks. It didn’t have anything on it I cared about. Besides the overwhelming majority of people own PCs, they’d reformat it as the Mac elements would be unreadable. At first, the driver was like, no no, it’s okay, I said it’s not okay, I wasn’t thinking and this is worth around $20, I insist please, you’ve helped me greatly, then ran back to my car.
Hopefully, they’re not scarred by the experience; some crazy white dude in a VW Golf lacking the brains to keep toll money in his glove box. I also doubt they’ll ever read my web page but I still want to thank them for the quarters and helping a stranger. We live in violent times, even in a laid back city like Austin, you never know who’s got a gun because it’s still Texas.