In Michigan we simply call it fog. Here in California they call it a “marine layer.”
There is a long, technical explanation of what a marine layer is, but basically it’s when cold water (in this case coming down from Alaska) meets warmer air along the coast and fog forms.
Whatever you want to call it, we’ve had several days of fog here this past week. Given that we are probably less than five miles from the Pacific Ocean we can watch the fog roll in as it shrouds our trailer in a fine mist. Kinda cool.
Tuesday was a particularly foggy day. King was supposed to have blood drawn for routine doctor “stuff,” but decided to put it off for a day as the “marine layer” was particularly thick. Despite the fact that King learned to drive in the Detroit area, and he’s fairly proficient in driving in six lanes of traffic (read: he’s scary as hell) he decided to avoid the morning rush, choosing instead to brave it on a sunny day. It was a relief for me. I’m the navigator.
King has no sense of direction. I mean none, nada, zilch, zippo. He also gets behind the wheel, grips it with one hand and holds his cigar in the other. I shout directions from the passenger seat. And I do mean shout. He generally drives with the window cracked as it’s supposedly going to suck the stinky cigar smoke out the window (hint: it does not). With the wind whistling in his “good” ear I literally do have to shout directions at him. And tell him which lane to get into because he doesn’t look at road signs either.
His job is to drive. Mine is to think ahead. Two lanes of traffic can split into four lanes at a traffic light. If he needs to go straight, I cannot assume he’s going to look at the direction signs on posts or the arrows painted on the road, so I have to be quick to determine which lane to get into, while looking at the map because after the light he’s going to want to know how far ahead the next exit/turn/traffic light is.
As you might imagine, I’m not fond of being the navigator. It’s taken me seven years to get him trained enough to give me a few minutes when we first get into the truck to put the address into Google Maps. I’m a pretty good navigator, but the longer we are married (49 years this month) the harder it is.
Even our grandsons are aware Poppa can get lost leaving a parking lot.
This past week we were taking one of the grandsons to his jiu jitsu lesson. King has taken him to several lessons. I’ve gone once.
“Poppa, that’s not the driveway. No Poppa, it’s not this one either.”
I pointed down the road and said, “It’s down there where the turn lane is.”
King wanted to know how I knew where the driveway was. I pointed out I had been there three weeks ago. I know he wanted to ask how I remembered, but that would have meant he had to admit he had no clue. Instead he just said, “Well, Grandma got lucky on that one.”
Be kind. Give good directions. Learn to tell fact from fiction (hint: facts won’t be found in memes on social media).
