On the road with new wheels

The Phactors have been buying new cars on average every 14.5 years whether we need one of not. It's just the kind of wild spending people we are. After 12 years TPP's old car had logged 70K miles. The F1 grabbed it and is gone. So the new car was picked up Saturday last, driven on a few errands, and then taken on a road trip to see the Florida sister, a nice 15 hour drive away. So here we are, 5-6 hrs down the road. You don't expect much out of road food, but the restaurant Mrs. Phactor picked, looks like so many of those thematic chains, but wasn't a name of any familiarity. To our surprise they had oysters on the half shell, really nice ones from the Gulf, but unlike a civilized state they still allow smoking in restaurants in this southern state, and the non-smoking section was not sufficiently isolated from the smoke. How unfortunate. The quite nice young waitress, also quite new at the job, was attentive and sweet, but the look on her face when serving the oysters was quite precious, that look of total disbelief than anyone would eat such things. The new wheels performed quite well, and discovered that after turning on the lights, the dash board-steering wheel-door panel instruments all lit up red along with other instrument screens and such that the Millenium Falcon has nothing on these modern wheels. And a rather funny construction - no ash tray (which was always used for our toll change anyways) and no cigarette lighter, but the socket is still there for charger adapters. That's progress!