The TA and Petro likes smelly drivers

And have you ever seen a truck stop chain offer "2 for" sale discounts on anything but the items with the highest fat or sugar count? WTF?

No lower sugar teas? No waters? No lunch meats or cheeses? No fruit items? Seriously?

Have you EVER seen any item that was at least "somewhat healthier" on sale? That's a rhetorical question of course but it should make you wonder.

I guess I should have posted this separately under the Rants section. Sorry. Carry on.

 

No. I'm a worn out driver that wants to take "a refreshing shower" per the infomercial, not perform inventory and a pre trip on said shower.

The cashier did put the shower back on my card though.

The Lenny's was good though, or I was very hungry, one of the two. Expensive though.

 

I will go for a hot cakes & sausage in a just a minute. Slept like a stone for nearly 10 hours, after wearing myself out flapping my arms to dry off, and the psychological damage of not having a towel.

This is a better J though. The one's in Utah always are.

 

Petro has an excellent salad / fruit selection. You guys must discover the "To go" box. Costs half of what it does to sit down, and if it's a nice gal that rings me up, I give a few bucks.

 

Posted wrong thread, sorry, 10 CSA points?

 

That one is actually a Destroyer Class warship a little lighter than 10,000 ton. Cruisers are almost twice that tonnage.

The true battleships such as the Iowas are put away as museum ships with the understanding some portions are closed to public and kept "Warm" for redeployment someday. Recent new weaponry being deployed by Russia and others can cut through it's armor like a hot knife in butter now. The entire magazine below one of the turrets can go Kaboom very easily now. No problem at all to sink these ships. (I hate to say it, but it is a truth, not a pretty one...) There are still a couple Kirovs from the 80's running around, but not as numerous as they once were. I think they only built 5 in total, I know of maybe two that are in use today. The new Kaliburs and Sunburn class missiles that go with them are very fearsome.

However, it's not all negative. We are working on the so called rail gun, a pair of electric rails driven by a 30Kw on site generator to feed it pushing a 8 pound aluminim alloy billet to 100 plus miles. One of the problem is getting that thing to "Fly" around the curvature of the planet and still hit a target

Prior to the rail gun, the St Paul off shore of Vietnam spent three days shooting the enemy targets at a range of 35 statue miles or roughly 70,000 yards max. It's a 8 inch naval gun on those ships. Iowas had 16 inch 45 caliber and would reach about 24 miles. Two little tidbits about the three of 4 (Not missouri as she was not fitted...) three of four BB's have nuclear 20 kt shells in special secure holding areas in the magazine spaces, around 10 to 20 shells at most between 1955 and roughly 1960. Obviously the US Navy has never confirmed or denied the use of or presence of nuclear weapons.

Also off Vietnam, occasional one shots were fired against a forest so that it will clear about 200 yards radius of all limbs, trees and leaves for helicopter zones to land troops. A further 150 yards found trees stripped of all leaves.

Also during the 80's a special round with scatterable munitions were in each rumored to be used, I think once in battle on television recorded to tape for broadcasting later was a hillside with about 1500 Syrian Troops that were destroyed completely either by a cell of three B52's and rockeye muntions or possibly by one of the Iowas with the scatterable munitions by gunfire off shore. This occured off of Lebanon around 82 or 83, possibly a trigger for the future attack on the US Marines Barracks in Beruit as a retaliation measure. I remember the broadcast first hand one morning when that hill was covered in smoke and it would take many more years before I learned of the two possible sources that killed so many infantry in such a short time. Poof. All gone.

Finally but not last, even though the Iowas 16 inch shells fell at a angle of 54 degrees to penetrate at least 5 inches of Ship Deck Armor face which is a very very hard type of steel. There was a special hard cast rounded nose shell that was rumored to penetrate much more armor than that as early as 1939 making the Yamato Japanese warship and all her armor as thin as paper in those days.

Which is interesting because I have some 255 grain hardcast round noses in .45 super (Approx 1350 fps) that is rated for 30 inches of penetration, about twice the 19 inches expected of a regular ball round that only lumbered along at 870 or so fps. =) The Iowa shells were gone at 4000 feet per second at the muzzle with a atmospheric overpressure to 50 times standard up to 15 yards from the muzzle. Basically capable of destroying a human being by crush forces alone.

I can go on. But it's some really good stuff.

Back to the Fighting Fitz, there are hard questions being asked of it's bridge crew. There should have been no excuses acceptable from them in a very busy shipping lane crowded with shipping at the time and date of collision. Espcially with a container ship three times the tonnage and almost twice as big with only about 1/3 of the top speed, with about a hour needed for it to work up to 24 knots from 15 while the Fighting Fitz should only need about a minute and change to light off the gas turbines and be gone from town at god only knows how many knots or more like really fast.

There is another price to the loss of the Fitz. Her ability that was proven to shoot down ballistic missiles currently being fired by the North Koreas is a skill lost to the Navy while it will take a year to fix this thing in the yard and return to service. One of the reasons I suspect why the two Carrier Battle Groups have decided to blow the joint near Korea itself and head further east to gain sea room and additional air space needed to spot and engage any inbound missiles from space from now on in case of war.

Regarding the Petro and TA's Many truckstops I know of have literally passed into memory. Do I wish I have a camera? Not particularly. There was no digital camera availible in my day because you had to pay good money to develop 35mm pentax camera film. I might still have that Camera in a box somewhere but there is no point in trying to find it because they pretty much quit making film now as of 10 years plus ago. Buried by Digital. You can take ten thousand pictures for nothing at all now.

 

Why would anyone use a towel provided by any truck stop is beyond me. Just looking at them you might catch some sort of disease.

 

I've been using truck stop towels almost daily since 1980 and haven't had any issues yet and I simply don't get sick, ever. Just try not to think about it too much. Beats mildew in the truck from wet towels hanging every day.

 

Yea I hung my T shirt off the air lined and put my shower shoes on the cat walk, they were dry this morning.

 

I think you and the shower attendant think very muck alike.