Thank you for your reading. Click on my small avatar to review the previous wonderful articles. The last article mentioned that we had authentic Cantonese cuisine at a Guangzhou aunt’s home in the United States, and her son-in-law collected over 100 guns. We saw all kinds of real guns of various lengths, including some relatively rare Type 56 sniper rifles on the market.
Today, the five of us got up at 4 a.m., finished washing, put some luggage in the trunk and set off. It was exactly 5 a.m. A pitch-dark night. The five of us set off in a CRV from Texas towards our destination of this self-driving tour – Florida. To drive from Texas to Florida by self-driving, we need to cross four states including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, and finally arrive in Florida. A total of six states. At 5 a.m. in the United States, many people are still sleeping, and there are only a few vehicles on the road. To be honest, Americans are really not as diligent as Chinese people. If it were 5 a.m. in Shenzhen, there would already be many vehicles on every main road, no less than during the day. So it’s unreasonable that Chinese people are not rich.
We quickly got on the highway. The speed limit on the highway is 75 miles per hour, which is 120 kilometers. It’s the same as in China. The difference is that there are not so many dense speed limits, and no mobile speed measurement or section speed measurement has been seen. It was found that on the American highways, the places closest to the divider on the left side and the places closest to the roadbed on the right side are paved with washboard-like cement slabs. It is said that this is to prevent traffic accidents after dozing off and deviating from the lane. The tires running on the washboard-like slabs will produce a strong and dense bumpy feeling, waking up the dozing driver and thus avoiding accidents. Using such washboard-like cement precast slabs on hundreds of thousands of miles of highways across the United States is a huge project.
Less than an hour after leaving home, we entered a service area to relieve ourselves and take a short break. Entering the highway service area in the United States for the first time, it felt like entering a museum. Not like a museum, it is a museum. Some old items are displayed in the glass cabinets. I don’t know if they are cultural relics. They should be relatively valuable items, otherwise they wouldn’t be covered with glass. The decoration, style, color tone and broken walls inside the room should be imitating a certain memorable place. There is a car placed in the center. Just looking at the wheels, you can tell that it has a history of at least 150 years. A Lone Star Flag is hung above the house. When the United States was established, Texas was originally the Lone Star Republic. Later, it joined the United States of America as an independent republic and became one of the states. Legally speaking, it can secede, and all Americans know this.
As the car was driving, it became dawn. Unconsciously, the sun also emerged. The car has been driving for a long time, and we can always see large tracts of flat land on both sides of the road. It’s obvious that they are not crops but should be pastures. Sometimes, we can see large bundles of hay, and occasionally, we can see a solitary house in a large open area. I think this should have been the place where American cowboys herded cattle one or two hundred years ago.
Refueling at the gas station in the high-speed service area. This service area is very small. The oil price is $3.09 per gallon. One gallon is equal to 3.8 liters, which is equivalent to $0.81 per liter. 81 cents per liter of oil. It’s unimaginable if it were in China. Don’t convert. Americans earn and spend in dollars. Why convert? The average salary of Americans, also known as the median, is approximately $3,000 – $4,000. Just imagine, if we could earn a salary of three or four thousand yuan with such low prices, how happy would that be?!