The Roadtrip Half-Time Report

Road trips can be the exemplar studies of random spontaneity. Nothing can be more random and cause a more spontaneous reaction than the I Love Lucy Museum in her hometown, Jamestown NY. What are you supposed to do, dear reader, when you are confronted with a billboard-sized face of our favorite red-head with the printed imperative “Exit Now!” Yes, it did put me two hours behind on the already long leg from Ithaca, NY to Lexington, KY, but it was worth it. I Love Lucy paraphernalia is readily available in any major tourist attraction, but this was the mother-lode. In fact, you couldn’t buy anything without her likeliness, be it cup, dish, t-shirt or underwear.

Ohio was the most aromatic of states. In driving through the north, you could smell sweet corn as they ripened on the stalk. In passing by Columbus, the capital, you could smell the landfill as the refuse stink wafted over the interstate. And as you got close to the Kentucky border, horse and cow manure permeated the air. The second place winner was Wisconsin, when the interstate weaved right by a mint farm.

In America, we have these people called “presidents” and we like to build statues after their names. One of these statues resides in Cincinnati in Garfield Square, named for James A. Garfield, the 18th president. This reminds me: have you ever heard of the comic strip Garfield minus Garfield (http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/)? Apparently, if you remove the cat Garfield completely from the strip, it becomes surreal yet incredibly funny in it's own right. Imagine what the USA would have been like if we did not have President Garfield. Coincidentally, President Garfield was assassinated 8 months into his administration. Surreal, isn’t it?

The American Diner is a fine example of the ingenuity it took to standardize food quality across the thousands of miles of roads that make up American highways. In order to meet the difficulties in supply, the foods are made from goods that were readily available across the country, such as eggs, beef and potatoes. In order to satisfy even the pickiest eaters, the dishes are filling yet inoffensive in smell and taste. In order to standardize cooking practices, skillets and deep fryers are the only cooking methods allowed. In essence, everything must be fried to a standard blandness.

In that regard, the Taco Salad I had for lunch was a smashing success. The diner succeeded in not only making a salad into fried grease ball, but they also succeeded in removing the spicy pectins from a Jalapeno pepper. The lettuce was crunchy, tasteless and full of water. Imagine my surprise when I realized that, half way through the salad, that the tomatoes did not have their tartness. They were so bland that I did not even know they were in the salad until I found one while picking at my food.

In Indiana, the most popular billboard advertisement was for billboard advertising space.

In Wisconsin, I got stung by a mosquito. Normally this is not anything to write home about, but in this particular time, I got stung on my right hand ring finger, right next to my Brass Rat. I went to bed not thinking anything of it, but I woke up the next morning with the ring constricting the swollen finger and I could not budge it over the now swollen knuckle. Taking a page from the MacGyver textbook, I recalled an episode where he escaped from being tied down by using water as a lubricant. I went into the shower, soaped up my finger, and painfully pulled the ring off.

That’s it for now. More stories to come.