Life is weird.

I would consider myself an excellent driver.

But like all people, I have my down falls. I'm about as good as parking as I am driving in construction zones.

On my way south on Thursday, I got stopped in the middle of nowhere by a construction zone.

I was the first car to stop and wait for the pilot car. When the lady with the "stop" sign flagged me to drive closer to her, I thought I did something wrong.

I thought I was going to get yelled at for something.

Instead, I rolled down my window. For 10 or 15 minutes, we had a great conversation. She wasn't from around there, so I told her to drive to the sprawling metropolis of my hometown and eat at an Italian place downtown.

It turns out that she really liked my suggestion. She lived in Italy for 15 years and she goes back every other year to visit her kids.

I asked her to say something to me in Italian.

She told me hi, asked me what my name was, how old I was and where I worked, all in Italian.

In the middle of nowhere in western Kansas, on a road so small there isn't even a shoulder, with wheat fields as far as the eye could see, a woman was speaking Italian to me.

Life is weird.