Some random thoughts on things that may or may not be making headlines as I ponder the meaning of life while sitting behind the steering wheel of a 2001 Ford Explorer.

A man can do some pretty serious thinking when logging hundreds of miles of interstate driving from Buffalo to North Carolina and then back to Western New York in a single weekend:

• Everyone has their favorite road trip snack foods. Some people like potato chips while others prefer cookies.

For me it’s a simple bag of sunflower seeds. For a mere 61 cents I have a simple and healthy snack that provides me quite the challenge of splitting open the shells with my teeth, eating the seed and then spitting the shells out the window of a vehicle moving at approximately 75 miles per hour.

• I don’t care whether I’m hungry or not, if I see a Waffle House on any road trip I take I’m stopping there for a meal. Two thumbs up for fast and affordable food always served with a smile. When is someone going to open up one of these restaurants somewhere in Western New York, specifically near Hamburg?

• Picture this scenario: you’re staying in a hotel that doesn’t feature a restaurant, bar or lounge area. So what happens if you’re hungry and/or thirsty or just want to watch some television while your roommates are sleeping? Just take a walk down the street and stroll right into another hotel.

That’s what I did last weekend. I had a great time sipping on a few beers, eating peanuts and watching college football with folks who thought I was staying in the same place that they were temporarily calling home.

As some of my friends like to say, no harm and no foul. I wasn’t obnoxious and helped pump money into the local economy as one of those out-of-towners who was more than willing to get the weekend off to a grand start knowing full well I wasn’t going to be driving and only had to walk a few hundred feet to safely get back to my weekend residence.

• All this recent talk about the H1N1 virus and the swine flu scare really got me thinking, particularly whenever I had to handle a key to a bathroom at service stations on my trip down south.

Find me a better source for distributing germs, diseases and other yucky airborne viruses and I’ll buy you breakfast AND lunch at the closest Waffle House.

• Speaking of service stations, convenience stores and gasoline kiosks, I found it just a bit odd that at one stop in Virginia the cashier was really promo ting the sale of a particular brand of packaged brownies. I’m not sure if her overzealous efforts to convince me to purchase the snacks were part of a contest with the distributor of the brownies or if it was simply a matter of getting rid of something that was past its expiration date.

I passed on the offer, instead choosing two bottles of Gatorade and two more bags of those tasty sunflower seeds.

• Another quick item about food: I did NOT try the chicken wings or the pizza down south because a friend who lives below the Mason-Dixon Line told me I would be “greatly disappointed.” I did purchase a couple of hot dogs from a street vendor. The wieners were just OK since they were boiled and I was unable to dress my dogs with chopped onions.

The hot dog cart owner did provide me with plenty of napkins and said “God bless” at least three times during the 90 seconds it took us to complete our transaction.

• If you are a Western New Yorker who is a fan of the Buffalo Bills and/or Buffalo Sabres visiting North Carolina, I strongly encourage you to visit the Town Tavern, located on North Tryon Street in Charlotte. The bar is filled with sports memorabilia and lots of native WNYers work at and patronize the place.

• Memo to Buffalo Bills Offensive Coordinator Alex Van Pelt: the next time a handful of Bills fans approach you at a cigar bar, run the other way! My apologies to you for my friends peppering you with “this is how you need to fix the offense” suggestions.

(Daniel Meyer is a columnist for the Weekly Independent Newspapers of Western New York, a consortium of 18 community-based weekly newspapers with a combined paid circulation of 75,000 homes. E-mail your comments to: meyersmusings@gmail.com. Opinions expressed here are those of the author.)