Road trip! The road far more traveled

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Road trip! We’re just back from our obligatory winter trip south, the annual pilgrimage many here call “Getting Outta Dodge.”

There are other places in more southern latitudes I’d far more prefer to visit than Eugene, Oregon — Sonoma County and Santa Fe being only two. But Eugene is where our new grandson Trevor is.

Besides, there was a Carl’s Jr. (meh) and Trader Joe’s (yay!) five blocks from our Airbnb.

The trip back, on I-5, was mildly interesting. A few pages from my back-to-PT travel notebook:

1. Rest-area coffee is usually dreadful, but one stop has consistently upped its game by serving donated Starbucks. (Psst. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s the second one north of Portland.)

2. That crackpot’s billboard near Centralia now wants us to support that odious state legislator, Rep. Matt Shea, who has been called by colleagues a domestic terrorist.

3.Heard that old Sinatra classic “One for My Baby (And One More For The Road)” on a Seattle jazz station. Isn’t this song, which I like, an endorsement of drunk driving? Where are the P.C. police when you need them? If you can bust “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” shouldn’t this one should be banned, too?

— Not Bill’s Bill: I opened my latest Medicare statement the other day, and in big black letters on the first page as usual was: THIS IS NOT A BILL. Whew.

But wouldn’t it be funny if, back on Page 7 after all the medical charges were listed, it then said: Fooled You. This IS a bill!

This Bill, anyway, would find that funny.

— It’s so much easier to watch MSNBC now that the insufferable, obnoxious mainstay Chris Matthews has been shown the door. For years I’ve joked that Matthews is the only interviewer who’d interrupt the Pope.

When I was radio TV columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, Matthews was our Washington D.C. bureau chief. Even back then, the Matthews “magic” obtained: Each time Tip O’Neill protege Matthews would strut into our newsroom, eyes would roll and gagging gestures would be made. This egomaniac was not a welcome sight to real journalists.

Nor was another star who was far more well- known: Actress Sharon Stone. She would flounce through the newsroom en route to see her boyfriend/future hubby, our editor-in-chief Phil Bronstein. Soon after, Stone was a spectator as a Komodo dragon tried to bite off Bronstein’s foot inside an enclosure at the L.A. zoo. A birthday present gone bad. Quite the couple, those two.

—9 Lives? How about 11 or 12? A while back, I suggested we just might have PT’s oldest cat. Our long-time black feline friend, Rascal, is now 24. That’s absurdly old. She fits right in here in a town in the county with the state’s highest median age. One vet friend who recently visited calls her a “centenarian,” which she probably is. And she’s always been healthy — her only vet visit was to be spayed — and she still chases a laser pointer.

You know of another cat in town who’s this old? Drop a line.

—Voting lines: From a guy I follow on Twitter whose handle is Middle Age Riot (you should follow him): “If I were Donald Trump, I’d be worried that there are people willing to stand in line for seven hours to choose my opponent.”

—I’ve finished the best political book of the young year: Rick Wilson’s bestselling “Running Against The Devil.” Wilson is a long-time GOP operative, a great writer and talented humorist who’s a regular on cable shows. One sample from his highly recommended “Devil”: “Trump isn’t Hitler. Hitler had normal-sized hands and the ability to concentrate for more than 30 seconds.”

 (PT resident and humorist Bill Mann keeps his e-mail account mainly so readers can reach him. Newsmann9@gmail.com)