Inaugural Post!

Report from the road (2-18)

Left MN Thusday afternoon. Drove all day Friday, dropping south then southeast to get out of the cold and icy weather. Started seeing signs for Indianapolis, and decided to keep driving in order to make Saturday morning practice. For those who are not in the karate group, Indianapolis is where a high-level senior, J--- T---, lives, so something like making a stop at Dagobah to hang out at Yoda's place on the way to somewhere else. Spent Saturday with J--- and the Indianapolis dojo. Practiced levitating the Jeep into and out of swamps (you know, in case I don't feel like putting it into compound low 4WD and just driving it out for some reason---much more relevant if one drives a spacefighter spaceship airplane thing than a Jeep). Rest of Indiana, then Illinois, which if anything is even more flat; Ohio, which is to Michigan what Wisconsin is to Minnesota and New Jersey is to all the rest of the world; the Land of the Bitter Clingers, whose villages cling (bitterly) to the sides ofmountains; and finally, Connecticut, home of the yankees. The Midwestern flatness started to turn into rolling hills in Ohio, then full-blown mountains in WV/PA. I kept my tank >= 1/4 full in PA, because I really didn't know when I'd see the next gas pump. Wolves howling, that sort of thing (werewolf? there wolf! there castle!). People in CT sound like Edith, Archy Bunker's wife, and I'm not sure that what the Clingers speak is actually English. The Clingers wear square beards with little flappy bits on the chin, whereas the Midwesterners like to wear mesh-backed baseball caps.

In CT a few days now. I have discovered the local Walmart, Parthenon 24-hr. Diner and gun shop. Must still find the Chinese restaurant that's called Great Wall. So far, place looks a bit run-down, as if it hasn't been swept since Colonial times. Small winding roads, whitewashed wooden buildings, which seem to have been rotting^Wbecoming more and more picturesque ever since about 1677, and like that. As in upstate New York, I noticed several instances of really run-down looking places right next to pretty nice-looking ones. A "town" in this place is about a five minute drive from the next "town". New Haven, which passes for a city round about these parts, seems to be about the size of Albany, or Ann Arbor if the students are in. Interesting to note that I am actually getting use out of my Jeep's gearbox now: this place has terrain.