Feast your eyes, mateys, for this is how your country is supposed to look. This is what the First Amendment was made for: if you think our democracy is in danger then you’re supposed to amplify that message in whatever way you can. And while not everyone can do what I do, the law will protect those who try.
Three days +, Interstate 25
I’m not usually big on this sort of thing, but I’d like for you all to take a moment now to pray. Pray for the health and salvation of the rebuilt transmission I bought like six weeks ago and is leaking fluid which is a total bitch because you have to refill it through the dipstick which totally sucks because it’s this tiny little hole way the hell in there and there’s no light and you need a special funnel and it’s hot as all fuck.
Duration unknown.
Up for over a month, Hwy 37 just outside of Marine World — visible to all lanes of the highway and most of the rollercoasters.
Dread the passing of this transmission, for it was this transmission and the one before it that brought these signs to Our Land. Pray for a benevolent reading of the six week/3,000 mile warranty, or that whatever the problem is it’s not too expensive.
Santa Monica Freeway — 165,000 cars per day. Seven + days.
Let me sing you the song of the rebuilt 1999 Honda Odyssey transmission that boldly set out and brought these signs to Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, only to be cut down in its prime, limping back home to the San Fernando Valley, to a town they call “Sylmar,” because that is its name.
Interstate 84 about 2 miles north of the 5, visible to approximately 100,000 cars per day — up for four days+
Interstate 10, Up for two days+
I sing of this rebuilt transmission, how it was nursed through the Central Valley, stopping every 20 minutes to check and micro-surgically apply more of the life-sustaining transmission fluid. I sing of how it was then let to cool for a bit at the Laval Rd. Starbucks before going on to the grueling gauntlet of gravity that is the Grapevine: bane of all transmissions, automatic or stick-shift.
Either I-70 or I-64, I forget which. Three days +
Two days + at 130,000 cars per day
Children shall laugh and thrill at the retelling of how the transmission-that-once-failed-but-was-rebuilt-again brought the 1999 Odyssey to the summit at Castaic and how songs were sung off Ziggy Stardust and Alladin Sane on the way down.
Two days, Interstate 495
US 101, Two days.
And old men will nod with a knowing smile and a gleam in their eye at the part where the van finally gets back to the transmission place and the guy says he’ll “take a look at it, but it’s gonna have to wait until tomorrow ‘cuz we’re totally backed up right now.”
Hwy 99, Three days +
Interstate 70, three days +
And all will sit, rapt in mute suspense as the van is brought in the next day and we wait for the call that could mean life or death for the ‘99 Odyssey. Hearts will leap into throats with each and every robocall congratulating us for staying at the Marriot, or inquiring about the terms of any outstanding student loans we might have.
Interstate 5, Duration unknown.
Pasadena Freeway, two days.
For these signs do not sprout themselves nor simply spring from the ground. The fruits of liberty do not grow upon trees.
I 495, DC Beltway, Duration unknown.
Next to Interstate 80, duration unknown
These signs must be hewn from cardboard which has been mined from dumpsters and painted with a roller. Once dried it must be spring-clamped to the curtain rod of a cheap motel room, it’s dire warning projected upon it and then meticulously traced and painted in. A process that can take up to half an hour!
I’m pretty sure this is I-64, duration unknown
And while a handful of others have mastered this secret, they have jobs and cannot travel.
Six days+ at 120,000 cars per day. US 101.
So sit with me now my friends, and share in my silent agony as I wait for that call. Pray with me that it’s nothing too serious because there’s no fucking way I’m putting another transmission in that thing.
Interstate 66. Up for four days.
