Last Time This Time?

 For a year and a half I've been hearing that once Carmen's CPE (that's Clinical Pastoral Education to you and me) residency ends, she won't be able to find a job as a staff chaplain. So In the waning days of 2020 a job came open at Baptist Hospital in Fernandina Beach. She applied, went through a four stage interview process over two months, and landed the job. That's the good news. One of the expectations of the job is that the chaplain live in Nassau County. So, once again, we are selling our condo and looking for the next perfect place in which to install ceiling fans, blinds, faucets and other miscellaneous items to make it our own. Meanwhile, Carmen is commuting an hour to two hours each way, as well as finishing the unit of CPE  that started in January.

I have been handling the showings of the condo, and trade people to do the things better left to contractors, such as installing a vent pipe from the dryer to the outside through the attic, and replacing rotten wood (and later, 2 panes of glass) in the bank of windows upstairs on the northwest side.

We have gone to Nassau County every weekend since her commute began, looking at rentals and houses for sale. We've made offers on a couple of places, but they're already under contract between the viewing and the offer. Going again tomorrow. I have faith that it will all work out. It always has.

Meanwhile, I am dreaming of the plethora of fishing opportunities, a well- funded community theatre, and a garage big enough to leave my mitre saw set up.

A fella can dream.

Hurray Hurray For JTA!

Not long after settling in here in Solano Grove, I did some research online, gathered some change and small bills, and set out walking to the bus stop directly across San Jose Boulevard from the entrance to our lovely condo community. The number 17 came along directly, I climbed aboard, and announced that I was going to the Rosa Parks Transportation Center to get my free geezer bus pass. I started to put money the the slot, but the driver stopped me. "You can ride for free to go get your pass!" he said. Cool beans!

This was my first trip into downtown Jacksonville since my 1982 Greyhound trip with Heather Bowers (see Slowly I Turned, posted on October 21, 2009) and believe it or not, it has grown. So, the bus twisted and turned through the streets, and finally came to rest at one of many slips at Rosa Parks Station. I thanked the driver, as is my custom, and stepped out into downtown Jacksonville. Being a fifty-plus-years veteran of public transportation systems, I immediately began looking for an information booth where I could inquire as to the whereabouts of the office that issues geezer bus passes. Before I could find one, a woman wearing a JTA jacket approached me and asked if I needed help finding something. "I came to get my free geezer bus pass," I replied. "Right this way" she said, and led me to a portable building on the far side of the bus slips.

The woman at the desk inside was very nice and very efficient. She entered my name, address and age into the computer, took my picture, and a few minutes later handed me my free pass, good for five years.

I can use my Star Card to ride any bus in the fleet to everywhere they go. It's the best deal ever. Thank you, JTA!

The Final Move (Again.)

In my previous post I complain about not having posted in three years. That was five years ago. Well! I was having my second session with my mental health professional last Wednesday, and she assigned homework: updating my blogs. Let the homework begin.

A year and a half ago (that's the summer of '18 to you and me) I began whining that I don't get to have any fun, never get a break from my full time job of caring for the four other mammals in my family. Carmen, at the same time, was going through a crisis in her full time job. The solution: we bought a condo in Jacksonville and moved again.

It started out simply enough. We were going to rent an Air B&B over Thanksgiving week and visit our friends who live in Jax, St Augustine and Port Orange. Another friend was flying from Virginia to spend a few days with all of us. And I was assured that I would have some time off from all the beasties. While we were making plans for our first actual vacation since 2001, we became interested in the idea of spending our golden years near our friends we've had for thirty years. So in September, we drove down from Nashville and went on a three-day tour of available properties with a local realtor. In October, our Jax friends looked at a condo they thought we'd like. Carmen flew down to look at it, and made an offer on it. By the middle of November it was ours (and the Bank's.)

So instead of a leisurely drive in the Subaru together, it became a Subaru with her and the dawg and the vacation stuff, plus me in a 16 foot Penske moving truck with the first load of stuff. My vacay included loading and unloading the truck. Carmen helped.

The days at the Air B&B were great. And Carmen even stayed with the dog while I went on a St. Augustine Holiday Lights Tour with our girlfriends. Another friend had Thanksgiving dinner with us. A splendid time was had by all. When it was time for Carmen to go back to work, I stayed at the condo for a few more days to line up the electrician (another friend in Jax) and the painter to get some work done before we moved the rest of our stuff. I drove a rented 2019 Nissan Rogue back to Nashville - well, I was in the vehicle, but it was clear that I was not the one driving.

Next came fast and furious packing of everything but the washer and dryer, an inflatable mattress and one of our camp chairs. Carmen would be staying in Nashville until April while I lived in the Jax condo. Otherwise, we would be paying insurance on an unoccupied dwelling!

A year ago, the middle of January, 2019, we hired loaders in Nashville and unloaders in Jacksonville, rented a 24 foot truck with a bench seat for two cat carriers plus me, and got 'er loaded up. Once again, I drove the truck and Carmen drove the Subaru with the dawg.

The most interesting story of that move is about Whitney, a tall, muscular black woman who ran her own moving business. She and two little skinny men who were obviously totally intimidated by her, unloaded that whole truck in less than four hours. Most impressive was the roll-top desk, a massive oak thing that was going upstairs. Whitney strapped that giant heavy chunk of wood to herself and hauled it up the steps while her assistants scrambled to try to help. One thing was crystal clear: pissing Whitney off was a bad idea!

So now, for the most part, we were moved. I was, anyway. Carmen went back to get the Nashville condo sold and finish out her job obligations. One more POD load came down with the washer and dryer and some miscellaneous stuff. Meanwhile, I researched the Jacksonville Transportation Authority and discovered that geezers over 65 get a FREE PASS for all public transportation!

Hanging with our friends is part of our routine these days. We attend theatrical productions and other cultural events with friends or just the two of us. Carmen is really happy with her new career as a hospital chaplain. I'm exploring our new neighborhood with da dawg. And I've even gone fishing a couple of times.
 
Jacksonville is a good place to live.

A Totally Unexpectedly Nice Day

You probably won't be asking why - why is this post in The Gospel instead of Cat Juggler?! Primarily, it's because I haven't posted a Gospel since 2012.

Yesterday, September 9th, 2015, was a day I had been anticipating with a slight edge of dread. Carmen, after three tries leaving messages that evoked no calls back, finally made an appointment for me with a primary care physician. Dr. John Guenst was recommended by another geezer in the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation. The doctor's office is in the Saint Thomas Medical Center - no wonder I had doubts - a little over six miles away, directly on Highway 70 South, same as us here in Bellevue. My favorite thing about it is that it is directly on the number 5 bus route, same as us here in Bellevue. Unfortunately, Carmen had an appointment with some folks from the other UU church in town, which took her directly past St. Tom. I wasn't going to be able to ride the bus in. BUT! I could ride the bus home!

After a nice long walk with Grace at Edwin Warner Park, we came home and showered up. I put on some semi-spiffy duds, loaded my laptop case with necessary items (not including my laptop,) and we set out. It's a pretty simple excursion going in toward the city on 70 South, and we were there in about twenty minutes. She dropped me at the main entrance and boogied on to her meeting. I went inside, found a directory of doctors, followed the direction arrows to the west tower, took the elevator to the 4th floor, and was there. Only an hour early! The receptionist signed me in. The medical assistant handed me the mandatory clipboard full of papers to fill out, and thanked me for being early. She said I could see the doctor twenty minutes ahead of my scheduled appointment. Then she went to lunch. So far so good.

I filled out my paperwork, and checked my Kindle Fire for wi-fi. Finding nothing I could tap into, I dozed off. As advertised, twenty minutes before 12:30 she called me in from the waiting room. We did the usual height/ weight/ blood pressure/ pulse/ respiration thing, and the entering of basic medical history into the computer system. What I discovered about her was that she has very close to zero sense of humor. Not good. But she went away soon and left me to wait for the doctor. And wait. And wait. That twenty minute edge evaporated, and then some. Finally, however, he came in.

I don't like doctors. Anybody who knows me knows that. I don't trust them. I see them as yet another leach on the bloodstream of humanity, just a shade smarmier than lawyers. Many many doctors have confirmed this belief. Therefore, I was not prepared for what happened next. Dr. Guenst came in the room, greeted me cordially, then laughed at my smart-ass remark. He spent an hour with me, going over my medical history, laughing at my silly commentary, asking for the stories behind the scars. We actually had a good old time together, and were reluctant to break it up so he could see other patients. This never happens.

He recommended a tetanus/pertussis/diphtheria shot and a shingles vaccine, which the assistant administered with her usual lack of good humor. Then she sent me to Registration, where nobody had told me I was supposed to go first, before coming to the office. When I finished there, she could send me to the blood drawing lab on the same floor, where eight vials of blood were removed from my arm. Then I was sent back to the receptionist, who signed me up for my online portal, and I was done, only three and a half hours after arriving. I took the elevator back down to the entrance, found my way out to the highway, and sat down on the bench to wait for the bus.

The Bus Stop sign at that locality actually had the #5 schedule printed on it. The next bus was the 3:30, in only a half hour. Long before that, however, it started to rain. Not a lot, not hard. Just a little sprinkling, enough to be annoying, but not enough to soak me. The 3:13 #3 bus stopped in front of me, the doors opened, and the driver asked if I wanted to come aboard. I wasn't standing up, or looking expectantly, or waving, or any other standard indicators of wanting to board his bus. "No thanks," was all I said. Time ticked on, while the crick in my neck from four years of looking for MBTA buses began to throb. 3:30 came and went, but I was not alarmed. Bus schedules are impossible to keep. Then at 3:32, a young (30ish?) woman came around the corner and approached the bench. "What time does your bus come?" she asked. I looked at my watch and smiled wryly. "3:30," I replied, "but I don't think it'll be on time." "Where do you live?" she asked. This threw me, but I recovered. "Bellevue." "Can I give you a ride?" I hesitated. I really like taking buses. "It's about to start raining really hard," she explained. "If it will make you happy," I said. She smiled. "I'll get my car, come around and pick you up here." She went back around the corner toward the parking lot. I was unsure of what to do. I wrestled with it a minute, then decided that if the bus came before she did, I would take it. It did not.

The light turned red at the precise instant that the SUV driven by Sara(h?) pulled up in front of me. I climbed in, reached WAAAAY out to close the door, buckled myself in, and we were off. "I was driving by and saw you sitting there in the rain. I just had to stop." I thanked her, and we introduced ourselves. I'm pretty sure she is primarily an unbridled extrovert who hates driving alone, because we engaged in spirited conversation all the way. We talked about Bellevue, Mexican restaurants, Edwin Warner Park, and our dogs, all the way to the CVS, where my new prescriptions would be waiting for me. I thanked her again, and went inside. It was pouring rain, and had been for most of the journey.

Three prescriptions and my lunch - a jar of honey roasted peanuts - in hand, I went back out. The rain had stopped, and I was dry walking all the way home.

Turn Around And You're There

Off I went on another paint delivery into the deep boonies of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. Vinny gave me directions to C&M Hardwoods on Leboeuf Trail in Centerville. He's not my first choice for directions, but of all the humans currently at Sherwin Williams Meadville, he was the only one who knows where it is. "Go up that street there, what is that, 27?" Great, not even out of sight of the store and he's unsure of his information. "You know where you turn left to go up the hill to the Fairgrounds?" "You mean 77. Yes." "Go on up the hill to the KwikFill" Good. If there's a KwikFill, a Country Fair or a Sheetz, he's all over it. "Keep going through Blooming Valley, and on the other side you'll go up the hill and keep going until you come to a road to the right called Lyona Road. There's really no landmarks out there to help you find it."  So far so good. "Turn right on Lyona Road and go to the end. The highway (he means 408) bends there, so going straight from Lyona Road puts you on the highway to Townville. Go through Townville, and on the other side you'll come to a four way intersection. I always look for a dilapidated trailer, and soon after that there's this four way. There's a sign there that says C&M Hardwoods. Turn right. It's a dirt road. Go about, I don't know, I'm terrible with distances, maybe a mile and a half?" I shrugged. "You'll find it. There's a building on the right and a building on the left. I don't think there's a sign, but you'll see Chris' green Ford truck." Well, I thought, I've gone farther on less before, how far wrong can I go? Let's find out.

The early stages were easy. But once I was past the KwikFill, I felt like I was in uncharted territory. On I went through Blooming Valley and up the other side, and on and on, trying to read every street sign going off to the right, knowing how well unmarked much of rural Pennsylvania is (see "The Road Less Marked" several posts back) and keep up speed so as not to piss off the local drivers. After way too many minutes of barreling along Route77 on the far side of Blooming Valley, I decided I must have missed it. I began looking for a place to pull off this busy highway. Up ahead there was a road off to the right. I slowed down and turned right onto, you guessed it, Lyona Road.

On I went on Lyona, rereading my notes I took while Vinny rambled. Miles down the road I finally came to the double stop signs in series taking you in a straight line from Lyona Road to the eastbound leg of Route 408. On through Townville and out the other side. Now I have gone there and back again, and I still couldn't tell you where this dilapidated trailer is. Perhaps, after all my decades in the South, I have a different idea of what to look for when it comes to dilapidated trailers. Anyway, I kept going and going until I figured I must have missed it. I began looking for a good place to turn around. There was an intersection up ahead. Oh look it's...Leboeuf Trail. There's the C&M Hardwoods thataway sign. I pulled off and found my delivery ticket. 11505 Leboeuf Trail was the address. On I went.

As usual, house numbers were hard to come by, but enough people had numbers on their mailboxes for me to track my progress from 12530 down through 11875 and then there was a cluster of mailboxes with four digit numbers! I went too far? How did I do that? I looked for a place to turn around. Guess what. C&M does have a sign. Right there.

The cluster of mailboxes served a cluster of houses down a little dirt cross street. Silly me.

CATA

The first public transportation I ever took was the bus system in Washington, DC in the mid-sixties with my worldly grandmother. I didn't know anything about it other than to keep a hold on her hand and ride wherever she took us, to the theatre and then back to the National Geographic building where my dad worked. Second was about forty miles and several years down the road. Having never wanted a vehicle, my first mission when I moved in 1971 from Vero Beach, Florida to Glen Burnie, Maryland was to learn the Baltimore City Bus System. My brother and his wife Liz lived in northeast Baltimore, and I visited them once a month or so. Liz was a Baltimore native who had taken city buses to school and everywhere else all of her life, so she could rattle off route numbers from anywhere to wherever. I quickly became proficient at it as well. The phone book had the system map in the front with the other maps - very handy if you could find a phone booth (remember them?) with an intact directory.

In May of '75 I flew to London, and was issued a transit system map in my tourist packet, which I used daily for the seven days of my "London Show Tour," covered in detail in my post from October 8th, 2009 entitled "Four Plays." In October of 1977 I got a job delivering new trucks all over the east. Figuring out transit systems became part of my skillset. From New York and New Jersey or Chicago or Atlanta, I'd breeze into a city, deliver my truck and then figure out how to get home to Baltimore, by bus, train or plane. In December of '82 I took my 13-year-old little buddy Heather Bowers on the "snow tour" to New York City, Buffalo and Niagara Falls, Ontario, complete with a hair-raising adventure on the New York Subway System ("Slowly I Turned" posted October 21, 2009.) Since then, I've used the Orlando LYNX system, learned Boston's MBTA better than their own information people, and put Albuquerque's buses to a lot of good use.

Then we moved to Meadville, Pennsylvania. I knew before we moved that Meadville has a bus system, the Crawford Area Transportation Authority, but I didn't pay it much attention, Meadville being so small and much as I like to walk. Then I had knee surgery. Suddenly that fifteen degree hill from Grove Street to the top of Chestnut Street became a long hard painful slog. Suddenly I was motivated to learn the system.

Three buses. That's all it is. The routes are divided into five, but it's really three. Blue Route A and Blue Route B are the same bus, same driver, A leaving the Downtown Mall on the hour and B on the half hour. Red Routes A and B are exactly the same hour and half hour schedule. Green is the long one that takes a full hour. It goes out to the Walmart, the movie theater and the Park Avenue Plaza among other attractions. That's it, the CATA bus system. Since I've been out and about after surgery, I've taken Green out and back once. Blue A, however, takes twenty-some minutes to haul my fat ass around the southeastern Meadville area from a block and a half away from work to the top of Alden Street, a block and a half from my house. It may be small, but it does the job I need it to do. That's all I can ask of it.

Just Like Old Times!

Yesterday, after I got all of my chores done, I allowed myself to go out and play.

See, Saturday night Carmen called from Jacksonville, FL where she was visiting a sick friend. During the course of the conversation she mentioned that she was glad to be coming home on Sunday, but wishing she didn't have to drive home from the Pittsburgh airport all by herself. She said she knew it had to be that way, but just wished it were otherwise. Somewhere deep down, an old yearning stirred, one that hadn't been heard from in a while. Way back in the early postings of this blog you'll find the fruits of it.

Sunday morning I made coffee and went after the last stages of the tub/shower caulking project with gusto, seeing light at the end of that tunnel. I caulked, cleaned up, and completely reassembled the bathroom. Then I went online to Greyhound.com and checked schedules from Meadville to Pittsburgh on a Sunday. Carmen's plane was scheduled to land at 6:28. The bus to Pittsburgh was scheduled to arrive at 5:20. I then looked up Pittsburgh's public transportation and found a bus leaving at 5:40 from downtown Pittsburgh, arriving at the airport at 6:25. That's cutting it pretty close. If the Greyhound is late and the plane is early, I could be stuck in Pittsburgh until the next bus back to Meadville. I printed the #28X Airport Flyer route map and schedule, and continued my chores.

I put away all of the tools and other materiel from the bathroom project, and dealt with the dishes and recycling that had been piling up since Thursday, when the bathroom project began. I scooped litter boxes and put out the garbage for Monday's pick up, including the detritus from the bathroom project. Then I looked at the clock. It was after 1:00. I could procrastinate on laundry. If I was going to catch the 2:55 Greyhound, it was time to begin launch sequence.

Gingerly I took a bath, being careful not to splash water on the new caulk. As I dressed, I loaded things into my backpack - my Free Cell game, my MP3 player and headphones, my Rand McNally road atlas, my hearing aids (it was windy and rainy for my walk downtown) and my various schedules and route maps.

It was hard to get out the door with the kitties dancing around me, lobbying for an early feeding time. I made it outside, and came right back in for a warmer coat. My raincoat would have sufficed for now, but who knew what my life in Pittsburgh might be like? Kitties notwithstanding, I managed to get out the door again.

The walk downtown was uneventful. I stopped by the bank's ATM for enough cash to see me through whatever, bought snacks for the road at Rite Aid and arrived at the Greyhound stop - a sign in front of the Downtown Mall - at 2:45. No bus yet. I went into the mall to wait.

At precisely 2:55 the Greyhound pulled up. After fifteen minutes online and fifteen more on the phone, all I had learned about tickets was that I couldn't get one on a Sunday. I hoped there was a way to surmount this problem, or this would be the end of the journey. The driver got out. I asked about a ticket to Pittsburgh. "You give me your ID. When we get to Pittsburgh, you pay the fare and get your ID back." Fair enough. I handed over my driver's license and boarded the bus.

Two and a third hours passed quickly between the Free Cell game and the five or six times I dozed off. There were only two stops on the way, and these two were not what I would have expected. We stopped in New Castle, pretty far off the straight and narrow, and (of all places) Zelienople. Nobody got on or off in either metropolis. And it seemed like only minutes later we were wending our way through the streets and bridges of Pittsburgh. We were right on time.

The only thing I didn't know was where the bus station was in relation to the 28X route. So when I paid my thirty dollar fare at the Pittsburgh station, I asked the ticket agent where I could catch the bus to the airport. She told me to turn right when I got out the door and go to Liberty Avenue a couple blocks down. I turned right and walked a couple of blocks. No Liberty. I consulted my route map. It showed a stop at Liberty and 7th. I was at Penn and 14th. I turned right again and smacked headlong into Liberty. Back I hurried, watching the time and the street signs - tenth, ninth, eighth, seventh. Which side of Liberty? Which direction is the airport? There's a bus - 28X to the airport! If I had been on the other side of the street I could have caught it. If I were allowed to run on my new knee I might have been able to catch it. I consulted my schedule. The next one would be at 6:10, arriving at 6:55 - cutting it VERY close. I called Carmen's cell phone and left a message asking her not to leave the airport.

The next 28X was right on time. It's called the Airport Flyer, and man oh man does it fly! It was seven minutes early. It let us out at baggage claim. I ran in, frantically searching for a monitor that would tell me if the Delta flight from Atlanta was on time or what. I found one. The plane was "AT GATE." The baggage would be at Baggage Carousel L. There it was. I mosied around to the far side back corner, and there she was! No Greyhound back to Meadville in the morning. Yay!

We grabbed her suitcase, took the parking shuttle to the car and headed out for some pretty good Mexican food at Don Pablo's on the way home in the good old Pennsylvania pouring rain.

Hermione Saves The Day!

Wednesday, February 29th Vinnie asked me if I would be able to drive to Pittsburgh on Friday, a scheduled day off. He wasn't certain he'd need this special carpet padding that soon, but he'd know before the end of Thursday. I said sure, I'd go if he needed me to. When I arrived at work Thursday, he told me I was going. He suggested I take my GPS. I like to think I would have done so anyway, but in any case, I was very happy that I did.

Friday morning at a few minutes after seven I loaded my backpack full of MP3, GPS and assorted other necessities into the van and set out. I had the address of my destination on the paperwork, and I began loading it into Hermione as I slogged through Meadville, heading for Interstate 79. She wouldn't accept the street name, however. I guess she'd never heard of it. Luckily, there were directions included in my paperwork. I proceeded as if it were still the twentieth century, with directions printed on a piece of paper. The font used was about six point. Trifocals are good.

"If you are coming from Meadville, you will want to get onto79S and stay on there, you will pass several exits ex: Craberry Twp./Warrendale, keep going past the Wexford, until you see the Sewickley exit, you will bear to the right, go to the first stop sign, make a left follow through small village at a slow pace, you will come across another stop sign beneath an over pass, make a right onto RT 65 north, stay on there for about six miles..." I passed the Cranberry Twp./Warrendale and the Wexford. There was one exit that mentioned Sewickley, but was not called the Sewickley exit, so I gritted my teeth and stayed the course. I was soon rewarded with the actual Sewickley exit. So I followed through a small village at a slow pace, came across a stop sign beneath an over pass, turned right onto State Road 65 and tried like hell to read the directions and drive. "...You will pass Quaker Village Shopping Center/Giant Eagle on your right, Red Cap Cleaners on your left, you will then see the Leetsdale Ind. Park on your left side, bear to the right to get onto the ramp for our facility..." I puzzled over that one while I tried to watch for the landmarks mentioned, never really sure I hadn't already missed one.

My cellular phone rings about three times a month. Twice a month it's Carmen. At this particular stressful moment, it was Vinnie. "Call me when you have the padding loaded. I gotta send you over to the Pittsburgh Sherwin Williams store." "Okay. Bye!"

Keeping the faith, at last I passed the Quaker Village Shopping Center and the Red Cap Car Wash. The industrial park was indeed visible on the left. Bear right...right! Oh shit! Lane change, exit right onto a ramp, left turn at the top of the ramp, cross over the highway to the complex. This part of the journey reminded me a little of Boston - once you find it you see how to find it.

The industrial park's signage pointed the way to the Shaw carpet distribution center. I drove around back to see if there was a shipping office door. I didn't see one, so I pulled into a parking space in front of the building. Stiff from two and a half hours on the road, I climbed out of the van and hobbled to the office door. Inside I found an empty reception area, empty hallway, empty offices along the hall. There was a button to push on the ledge of the reception window. I pressed it and waited. It wasn't thirty seconds before a human came through a door at the end of the hall and approached me. I showed him my paperwork and explained my mission, leaving out the challenges associated with finding the place. He scratched his head. Obviously this paperwork wasn't the normal sort. He went to an office door and expressed his dismay to another human, who took the papers, turned to his computer and began the business of sorting it out. "Where's your truck?" he asked. "Drive it around to the roll-up door in back, and someone will load you up."

Fifteen minutes later and much heavier with ten rolls of padding inside it, the van was on its way back to the highway. I pulled off to the edge of the parking lot and called Vinnie. He gave me the address of the Sherwin Williams at 6583 Hamilton Avenue in Pittsburgh. I fired up Hermione again, fed her this new information, and like a dog with a bone, she was all over it. First we were back on 65 southbound toward Pittsburgh. Hermione said we had about fourteen miles to go before we should exit onto I- 279 North. On we slogged in Friday morning traffic, watching the miles tick off on the GPS. After about twelve miles I encountered road construction. Soon after I began seeing signs telling me that the road was closed ahead, detour ahead, danger Will Robinson. With a sinking feeling, I realized that the exit Hermione was telling me to take was going to be closed. We were indeed shunted off SR 65 about fifty feet shy of the exit. Now maybe if there had been another pair of eyes in the van, we could have found the easy way to turn this misfortune around and find I-279 north. I saw south, and hoped the northbound equivalent would present itself. If it did, I didn't see it.

Hermione was not amused. I continued on the detour with her crying out instructions to exit right and go back to the real exit. I tried to reason with her, but she kept right on recalculating. I exited as soon as I could, and just began taking every turn and every exit she recommended. I have no idea where we went. I remember going through a shopping center parking lot, a business park and an apartment complex. I was completely at her mercy. Finally we got off highways and got on Penn Avenue for a couple of miles of good old fashioned city driving. For a short while, she had spasms where she would recalculate and try to tell me how to get back on Penn Av. I was still on Penn, so I ignored it. She'd unkink herself for a while, then go through it again, like three or four times.

Finally we reached our turn at Liberty Street, which quickly took us to Hamilton, I turned, and there was Sherwin Williams! Good old Hermione! I pulled in, unkinked myself and walked inside the store. They seemed to be expecting me. They told me to back my truck to their dock so they could load a couple of pallets. My perplexed look gave them pause. "Uh, I've got ten rolls of carpet padding in the van. A pallet isn't going to fit!" "We told him to send a box truck!" they replied. "You told Vinnie to send a box truck?"  "Who's Vinnie?" "The guy that sent me in a van." A look of understanding dawned on their faces. "There's another Sherwin Williams about a block up the street," they said. "Maybe that's where you're picking up from. This here is an automotive coatings division store."

Oh. I reboarded the van, pulled out onto Hamilton and drove another block or so. There was Sherwin Williams. They were expecting me, and they had six five gallon buckets of paint for me. That fit fine. In ten minutes I had loaded the paint, unloaded my bladder and called Vinnie. "I need you to go to the Hermitage store on your way back." he told me. The Hamilton Street store guy got me the address, and I loaded it into the GPS before setting out once again.

This time she directed me by a few short connectors to State Road 8. I remembered 8. It went through Butler last year when I drove down for my rah rah training meeting with other new people in the district. I pulled out the Pennsylvania map we keep in the van and saw where it was taking me. It was taking me north to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. That's cool. I had zero cash. I figured I'd stop in somewhere where I could buy a Coke and some kind of snack and get cash back for the Pike. On and on I drove through some very pretty countryside, unsullied by stores where I could get Coke and cash back. Miles and miles I drove. Turnpike 5 miles. Turnpike 2 miles. Turnpike 1 mile. I held onto the notion that there's always a commercial center at a major highway intersection. And I was right. Suddenly I had hundreds of possibilities. I chose right side, easy on/off the highway, easy parking. Rite Aid. Good. Coke, trail mix, cash. Mission accomplished.

I could just stop now. The rest of the story is pretty routine. The turnpike took me to I-79, to US-422 to I-376 to State Road 18 right to the Hermitage store. I got two more 5 gallon buckets of paint and headed for home like a horse to the barn.

As she has so many times before, Hermione saved my bacon. Without her I would still be wandering around Pittsburgh.

The Road Less Marked

Today's road trip was one of those trips that make me happy to have a blog about trips. Especially delightful is the fact that Rand McNally was involved.

Today was Monday, after a 97-day weekend - my first day back at Sherwin Williams. As I went to hang up my coat, I glanced at the delivery boards. None at all, all week. I was disappointed, since deliveries are really the only part of the job I truly enjoy. So I mentioned it: "No deliveries," I said. "Oh yes there are!" said Diane the manager. So I was shown the three-deep pile of delivery orders and told that she and Carrie (the new 'third key' employee) had just about gotten them together. So I took all the trash in the building to the dumpster and returned to the front a while later. My mind was scrambling to remember how to enter delivery info into the computer and get the appropriate paperwork to print. The twenty gallons of laquer needed two bills of lading, always fun to diddle up. It took longer than it should have, but I got 'er done. Then I asked about the hand-written address on one order for a company callen N. D. Rustic Furniture. "Oh, Vinnie told him we'd deliver there today. Vinnie's out sick. I'll see if I can print you a map." A map might have been good.

So Diane went on her computer and came back with a set of directions from Rand McNally dot com. They were easy enough. Go out the main highway west to Perry Highway (where Route 19 turns south,) go twelve point six miles, turn right on Lake Road, go three miles and turn left on Dodge Road. Point seven miles later, you're there at 105 Dodge Road! Twenty point one miles total. Easy Peasy. So, I took my laquer, my paperwork and my directions and headed out.

I knew that if I took the much faster Interstate 79 to the next exit south, I'd be in the vicinity of my destination, so that's what I did. I got on Route 19 and kept a sharp lookout for Lake Road. And Whoa! There it was! I whizzed by it almost before I saw it. About a mile down the road I found a place to turn around. Back I went to Lake Road and turned. Keeping a close watch on the odometer, I looked for Dodge Road as three miles rolled up. No left turn there. There had been an unmatked dirt (ice and mud, really) road a few tenths earlier, and another a few tenths after, but I wasn't willing to set out into the woods on a sloppy road based on the vague hope of it being right. I pressed on. I reached the road to Atlantic and was sure now I'd gone too far.

I pulled over and whipped out my cell phone. Hurrah, there was a signal, even way out here in Amish country! I called the number without much hope. Amish customers often give a phone number of a neighbor or friend who really isn't much help when push comes to shove. This one rang six times and was picked up by an answering machine. I left a message, knowing full well that there was no point. I continued on, looking for a place to turn around, saw a couple of guys shingling a roof, and pulled in there.

"Hey," I called, "do you happen to know where Dodge Road is?" They didn't, but they said I should knock on the door and ask the residents. I did. They had not heard of Dodge Road, or N. D. Rustic Furniture, but they had computers up and running, so John invited me in to look at the detailed map he called up from somewhere. He showed me that there is another Lake Road down in Mercer County, in Sheakleyville. He showed me a convoluted series of secondary roads (paved??!) that would get me there. "And that is US 19 there." I thanked him very much and told him to come on down to Sherwin Williams for paint. "Say hello to Vinnie for us," he said. He's been there.

I eschewed the secondary roads and tore out for 19. I turned right, drove three miles to Sheakleyville, and kept a sharp watch out for Lake Road over in Mercer County. There were a couple of unmarked roads to the right, but no Lake Road. I pulled in to a gas station and went inside. Why yes, the mechanic under the car on the lift HAD heard of Dodge Road. "Just go back north on 19, and turn left at the Church of the Nazarene." I asked if it was unmarked. "Probably. But that's Lake Road. Turn left and go about five miles. If you come to County Line Road, you went too far, turn around and come back a ways." I thanked him very much and set out again. The road was indeed unmarked, but there were a couple of mail boxes in front of houses with numbers and Lake Road stickered on. At three miles there was a dirt road off to the left. I kept going until a few tenths later I came to County Line Road. I returned to the unmarked dirt road and turned right.

The first barn I came to had a mailbox out front that had '145 Dodge' stickered on it. Yay. I continued to the next barn, with a house set back at the end of a gravel driveway. There were no numbers anywhere, but there were an Amish mother and three-year-old boy walking toward the house. And there was a car parked in front! I turned into the driveway and, seeing no-one around the barn, headed for the house. The mother quickened her pace, as if she were afraid of me. I stopped way short and climbed out. "Excuse me," I said. "May I ask you a question?"  She stopped and turned around. "I don't know if I'll know the answer," she replied. "I'm looking for 105 Dodge Road," I said. "This is it," she said. "N. D. Rustic Furniture?" I asked. "That's my husband," she said. Jackpot! She said I should put the laquer in the barn, and I did.

Rand McNally: 20.1 miles, fifty minutes. Reality: 43 miles, ninety three minutes. If the directions had said "Drive to Sheakleyville, turn right at the Church of the Nazarene and left at the last dirt road before County Line Road, things would have gone much smoother. Evidenly, Rand McNally doesn't know everything.

Texas Toast

Carmen's mother and father live in a beautiful house in a huge subdivision in Crosby, Texas, a bedroom community outside Houston. We've been there a few times here in The Gospel. We stopped there overnight on the way to the Grand Canyon in 1993. We and the cats stopped in for three days on the way to Albuquerque. I'm sure you remember.

Since they have lived there, they have added Carmen's younger sister Jamie to the household, as well as Jamie's daughter Brittany, now sixteen. Three years ago, Jamie's daughter Brooke was born, adding a lively new dynamic to an already quite dynamic household. So a few months ago they added a bulldog puppy, now five months old and forty pounds. His name is Shadow. He's big, he's a puppy.

On the day after Christmas, we flew to Houston, with a plane change in Philadelphia. To add to the adventure, we took advantage of a Hampton Inn offer: we spent the night there near Pittsburgh Airport, left our vehicle there and took the courtesy van to the airport. That way we didn't have to set out for the airport at 5:00am, and the cost was about the same as leaving the car in the airport parking garage. Win win, with one minor exception - as we approached the hotel we looked for something to eat at 5:00pm on Christmas Day. Nothing. Not McDonalds or Burger King or Cracker Barrel or Bob Evans or a grocery store or even a Walgreens. Nothing! We asked at the desk as we checked in. The only place they knew about was Domino's Pizza, a Republican stronghold. Eeeew. So we had a (damn it!) pretty durn yummy pizza for supper in our quite comfortable hotel room.

Overnight Carmen was overcome with the urge to purge, so she was able to eliminate one bag from our carry-on load. She left it in the car. Yay.

The courtesy van loaded us up at 6:30 in the morning and off we went to the Southwest Airlines ticketing entrance of the airport. Check-in was smooth, and even better when the agent told us we could each check a bag for free. Yay. Then came the dreaded Security hoo-ha. I knew it would be bad for me. Knee replacements set off the metal detectors, no question about it. So I was pulled aside and subjected to a full body pat-down, most of which time was spent reeling off a long list of disclaimers about where he was going to touch me, with what part of his hand and why. Jeez, man, just get on with it!

Carmen went up to the counter at the gate and secured a pre-boarding pass based on my recent knee replacement surgery. When we boarded the plane we saw the perfect spot on the Boeing 737. The first seats on the port side of the plane are behind a bulkhead, and the aisle seat sticks out farther than the bulkhead, giving me unlimited legroom. Perfect! Two planes there and two back, I got that seat on all four flights. Good ol' CarCar!

Three and a half hours in the Philadelphia airport went by fairly quickly. Then came the four-hour flight to Houston Hobby Airport. Good thing we ate a burger in Philly, because that jive sack of a dozen peanuts wasn't going to see us through to Texas. One really good thing, in my opinion: they've stopped rolling the stupid cart up and down the aisle. The attendant fills a tray with a load of beverages (pre-ordered by us) and walks it down the aisle. Much better.

Jamie picked us up at Passenger Pick-Up very soon after we picked up our bags at Baggage Claim. We rode in her big-ass Ford pickup with the extended cab, just one among many big-ass pickup trucks on the highways and byways of Houston. We're not in Pennsylvania any more, Toto.

Six days in a house with a teenager, a three-year-old, a forty pound puppy and a 72 inch television was quite a change for us. We missed our quiet house with our mostly relaxed kitties. The bestest bestest highlight of the week for me: we all (all but the dog) went out to an excellent Mexican restaurant on Thursday night. I know it was Thursday because Thursday is my evening shift as dispatcher for Tamarack Wildlife Rescue here in Saegertown, PA. The gig is to call the voicemail for messages, and deal with whatever messages there were. Up until that evening, the only message I had ever heard was, "There are no new messages in your mailbox." I was going to do it all by cellular phone, but there were very few spots in the house where I could get a signal. Then we went to the restaurant. I checked messages on the way there at 6:00 EST. No new messages. I checked at 7:00 EST as we were finishing dinner. A woman had called a few minutes after 6:00 EST to say that she had a raccoon in a trap in her ceiling and can somebody help her get it out because it's hissing and growling and stuff. This was my third time taking a shift for Tamarack, and my first time ever dealing with a situation, and I didn't have my notebook with me at the restaurant. The notebook has all the numbers to call for advice or action. It was near 8:00 EST by the time we got back to the house. I called for advice. The advice was: "We don't handle raccoons. Tell her to throw a thick blanket over the trap and pull it out of there. Open the trap outside with a long stick, and the coon will run away." She wasn't very happy with that advice, but understood that we aren't allowed to handle "rabies vector" species. Anyway, my part was fulfilled, there were no more messages, and my shift was over at 9:00 EST. And the Mexican dinner was excellent!

Saturday was preparing for the New Year's Eve cookout and fireworks extravaganza. I vacuumed inside the house and swept the back porch and the driveway. Jamie moved around the outdoor furniture and got firewood for the fire pit. Then she went out to buy more fireworks. Brittany straightened up the garage. Sandra prepped the bacon- wrapped vegetables and scallops for the grill. Olen played golf. The party started as darkness fell, and neighbors poured in from all around. The fireworks scared the piss out of the puppy, providing more clean-up opportunities inside the house because he sure as hell wasn't going outside! It went on until about 2:00am CST, long after I went to bed

Sunday morning I got up, made coffee and was given the unglamorous task of waking Jamie up. She wanted to drive us to the airport, four hours of sleep later. Sandra too wanted to ride along. She was in bed before midnight, so was in a better state of wakefulness. Brooke stayed asleep. Yay. Olen stayed with her.

Ticketing check-in was smooth once again, and security was not bad. Houston Hobby has the nekkid scanners, so I was directed in there as soon as I mentioned my knee replacement. Much quicker and much quieter. Three hours to Baltimore and 45 minutes to Pittsburgh, after an hour and a half layover, medical pre-boarding both legs. Carmen called the Hampton when we landed, and the van came just a few minutes after we went outside with our baggage. An hour after landing, we were in our car arguing with Hermione about the best way home. It was dark, it was raining, and the rain would soon turn to snow.

But Toto, we're not in Texas any more!

Time And Distance

We went to visit my parents in Blairsville, Georgia last week. Carmen drove, I navigated. As usual. Before setting out, I did some research for her. The Rand McNally Road Atlas told me that the distance from Pittsburgh to Atlanta was 684 miles. I estimated that since Blairsville is 100 miles this side of Atlanta and Meadville is 90 miles this side of Pittsburgh, 684 was a fair guess.

Google Maps told me it was more than 700 miles whichever way I took us. Twelve and a half hours was the time estimate. That doesn't count stopping for gas, lunch or road construction. So I tried to figure out the best way to go based on shortness of distance from Interstate Highway to Blairsville. Two years ago we went by way of I-85 and US 76 in South Carolina. I knew we didn't want to go that way again. It is a long roller coaster ride on narrow roads. Carmen doesn't like roller coasters. Or narrow roads.

My route took us to the west side, I-75 to Cleveland, Tennessee and US 64/74 east to North Carolina, then US 19 south to US 76. There was roller coaster action, but much less than the other way. Just now I adjusted the Google Maps route to the way we actually went. 773 miles. However it came to pass, Carmen got it lodged in her mind that it was a ten hour drive. Not.

We left at 7:00 in the morning. I called from the Slippery Rock rest area to tell my parents that I estimated we'd be there between 7:30 and 8:00. Carmen was not in the car at that time.

We had checked out of the library the complete, unabridged "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" on fifteen cassettes to listen to on the trip. Carmen has never read the trilogy, but liked the movies. I had been telling her about the details in the Harry Potter books that had been stolen directly from the Lord of the Rings books, so while we listened we made a verbal list of things, some mere suggested ideas and some unabashed steals, that we noticed. It was even more prevalent than I remembered. By the third cassette we had identified about fifteen of them.

We had lunch at a Cracker Barrel in West Virginia. We stopped for gas in West Virginia and a Confederate holdout gas station in Tennessee, and it was approaching dusk as we were suddenly brought to a standstill on I-75. We got out the GPS and fired her up. Hermione told us we'd be arriving at our destination at 8:35. I called with this new information. They said they were holding dinner for us, so don't stop to eat. By the time we busted out of the construction zone our arrival time was after 9:00. We exited on Us 64/74 and for a while it was still fairly flat divided highway. From Ocoee to Ducktown, however, it was a long twenty miles of roller coaster ride. We followed the Ocoee River, and for me it was mostly a beautiful scenic drive. For Carmen it was diminishing visibility and hair raising driving all the way. The interesting thing for me was seeing how this beautiful natural setting had been altered for the Atlanta Summer Olympics in 1996, with parking lots, cleared areas for grandstands, and towers and rigging for cameras etc. Under different circumstances I would have been wanting to investigate. But it was nearly pitch dark before we were on Route 68, Hermione's choice of southbound roads. The ten miles to our old friend Route 76 at Blue Ridge was the last of the anxiety of unfamiliar territory, and we breathed more easily the rest of the way. Our actual arrival time was 9:45. We ate a hasty dinner before collapsing into bed, window AC blasting away the heat.

We had a lovely visit with my mommy and daddy. Meals were eaten on the deck overlooking the Nationat Forest, with bird feeders hanging high in the air for our bird watching pleasure. Goldfinches, tufted titmice, nuthatches, chickadees and an indigo bunting were the stars of that show, with a few bit players for variety. A raccoon ripped its way through the screen Sunday night and ravaged the bags of birdseed on the deck - less unwelcome than the bear that did the same a couple of years ago..

Sunday the womenfolk went to church. The nearest neighbors, Darrel and Mary, are Lutheran, and Darrel is a minister. Carmen was happy to experience a mainstream Protestant service, and my mom was happy to get out of the house without my dad. That evening there was dinner and conversation at Darrel and Mary's house until late (9:30!) that night.

Our original plan was to drive home on Tuesday, but we decided to leave early Monday afternoon instead. Another fifteen hour day on the road we did not want. Darrel told us that the best roads to the Interstate Highway System were the route to Ashville, North Carolina. It also happens to be the most direct route. Carmen checked Hermione right off the bat. She said it was 586 miles to home. We scratched our heads over that one. We made reservations at the Hampton Inn in Charleston, West Virginia.

The US highways to Ashville were indeed the best we'd seen. We were happy to get to I-40, and then the exit to turn north on 240. That is where we came to a dead stop. For an hour and a half we sat there while emergency vehicles and a Hazmat Cleanup rig squeezed by. The people milling around us had heard that a diesel tanker had crashed and spilled its load, and that we were stuck for three and a half hours. We cancelled our reservation and made one at Johnson, Tennessee instead. The afternoon sun was pretty hot, but then it clouded over and a breeze kicked up. By the time we got moving, two hours ahead of the prediction, a massive thunderstorm was upon us. We could have gone another hour or two beyond Johnson, but we decided to call it a day. We lolled about in the air conditioning and watched TV while we ate the leftovers my mother had packed for us for dinner

Tuesday was pretty much uneventful. We listened to four more cassettes and some songs from my MP3 player. Hermione bitched at us whenever we strayed from her path, barking at us to make U-turns until she finally relented. The worst was US 19 from Tesla to Prosperity, West Virginia. It cuts across the triangle formed by I-77 and I-79 to Charleston. We were unwilling to risk a roller coaster ride. Hermione thought differently. We were almost to Charleston before she stopped recalculating.

We were in Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh, when I figured out Hermione's dirty secret. Carmen asked me to check the distance from there to our house. I did so. It said thirty one miles. I went back to the regular running commentary. She said it was thirty three miles to the exit. Thirty three to the exit, but thirty one total? AHA! Thirty one as the grow flies! AHA! Carmen got that ten hours number from Hermione's point to point distance, which has nothing to do with taking roads that zig and zag right and left, up and down! AHA!

So we arrived home about 5:00 Tuesday. Carmen didn't go out of town again until Thursday early morning. She'll be back tomorrow.

Another Ordination

This is my third, the second being Carmen's a year ago. The others were also Andover Newton graduates, the first being Janet Bush three years ago (I think.) We drove from Watertown to Framingham Massachusetts for that one. For this one we drove from Meadville Pennsylvania to Warren, Massachusetts on Friday and then to Northboro Massachusetts on Sunday afternoon.

Construction was the big story through New York. It used to puzzle me that there was so much construction going on at the same time everywhere up here. After a November to April winter, I realized that May to October is all there is for road construction and repair, with a lot of rainy days during that window. Fix roads while the sun shines! There were a lot of lane closures and being shunted over to the opposite lanes and the usual road construction hassles. People don't speed through work zones in New York, because two work zone violations get you a suspended license. But there were no stoppages or backups. Just a lot of guys standing around staring at the road. One was leaning on his elbows on the overpass railing staring at the road below. Road construction looks like a pretty easy gig.

We crossed Lake Chautauqua on Interstate 86, and Carmen was enchanted. We've heard so much about Chautauqua Institute, a mere two hours or less from Meadville, and now she's hankering to go there. The lake and environs are spectacularly beautiful. The Institute is miles away from the bridge, but it's not hard to imagine that the beauty there is even better for lack of an Interstate highway nearby.

So we ate our turkey sandwiches and drank our water and only stopped once for a fluid exchange in Bainbridge, New York. We exited Interstate 90 at the Palmer exit and let Hermione (our GPS) guide us through unfamiliar territory. She got a little confused at one point (or was it us?) but between the three of us we figured it out and made it through.

Exactly nine hours after leaving Meadville, we pulled into the driveway. The weather was warm , so the Ordinand, Misty Dawn and her spouse Jenna had the pool ready for swimming. Carmen swam. I sat in the shade.

Saturday was preparations for the Ordination and running errands. I learned the "Pages" word processing program on Misty's Mac laptop and generated twenty six signs for the pews reserved for various factions (CLERGY, FAMILY, CHOIR, etc) and after picking up a truckload of flowers, we had a late lunch at the Sturbridge Coffee Shop. Yum.

Sunday morning they went to Northboro for the morning church service and final preparations. We stayed and kept the dogs company until about 1:00, when it was time to go. The drive to Northboro took an hour through ridiculous traffic (compared to Meadville) Carmen robed with the ministers, and I explained to many people who I was and how I came to be there. It was a collaborative effort of the Northboro congregation, where Misty served her internship, and the Brookfield congregation, Misty and Jenna's home church. Each group thought I was with the other and tried to make me feel welcome.

The Ordination was very nice, including affirmations from both congregations and music by combined choirs and a collaborative quartet. Carmen did the Ordination prayer and the Laying On Of Hands, and Misty Dawn Shelly became Reverend Misty Dawn Shelly. Nice. Then we, they, Misty's mom and her partner and the Brookfield minister and her husband had a lovely dinner at Ravezzi's restaurant in Sturbridge before going home to collapse and process the day.

Monday morning we drove back. Construction still going on. Once even got exited off the interstate and back on for an overpass repair project. Still, no delays, other than the hour and a half we spent shopping in Erie, where we used to go monthly, but hadn't been to since February. After watching Jenna's 55 inch TV for a weekend, we couldn't face going home to our 19 inch. We bought a 32 inch. It's up and running.

Congratulations again, Reverend Shelly. It was a fun trip, a nice visit and a great Ordination!

Flicker From The Past

As my avid readers (you both know who you are) know, I was a professional driver from early October 1977 until the beginning of February, 1998. This sounds like a short time, and it is, but in terms of miles traveled and stories accumulated, it was a very long journey.

Now that I am a professional driver again, I can't help comparing the situation now to the situation a quarter century ago. Surprisingly (to me, anyway,) there are way more similarities than differences. The vehicles haven't really changed at all, nor have the roads. There are no longer CB radios, as far as I know. I don't have a clue what the long haulers are doing for company and information these days - a cell phone and a GPS? Probably MP3 players have replaced radios and tape decks. Maybe satellite radio? Don't know.

One thing has really struck me, however. When I was on the road, and for some years since, if a truck passed me, as soon as it was clear to pull over I signalled by flashing my high beams. I learned this behavior by watching other trucks on the road. The "thank you" for this courtesy was for the passing vehicle to flicker its tail lights - off - - on - off - o n n n n - off. This was pretty consistent. There were variations, but I'd say ninety five out of a hundred trucks knew and used this code, sign and counter sign. During my trip north in June of 2005 I reprised this practice and found the number of practitioners greatly diminished. Six years later, in all the driving I've done, I've flashed my high beams to passing trucks and not one has answered the call.

It's kind of a shame, you know. This was a widespread form of communication that required no devices or distractions, a common courtesy that warmed my heart a little every time flash was answered by flicker - an acknowledgement of my worth, a handshake made of photons. I guess it's a sign of the times. Courtesy and gratitude are in short supply, and the increased demands on every still-employed driver carve an ever deeper chasm between souls in need of solace. I guess I just refuse to let go of the old ways.

Book 'Em!

Well, I did it! Every now and again, Blogger reminds me that for a nominal fee, I can get my blog printed and bound into a book. It seemed like the end was far away for a long time, but now I'm in a holding pattern waiting for more adventures on the road. So a few weeks ago, I did it. For only $18.50 each, I had two copies of The Gospel printed, with photographs on the front and back covers. I was going to give one to my parents, but after reading through it, I realized that there were a few minor slightly uncomplimentary references to them. My mother rarely let a bus trip go through without warning me of the dangers of bus travel. Anyway, I thought it better if they were as ignorant of the book as they are of the blog itself. So I have an extra copy if anybody wants it. I often wonder whether anybody ever reads this, so if anybody reads this and wants a printed and bound book of my travel stories, it's free for the asking!.

Where The Sidewalk Ends

There is a law in Meadville that sidewalks need to be shoveled in a reasonable time after a snowfall. Of course, when a snowfall goes on for weeks, the spirit of the law (making sidewalks walkable) is lost. I hear that the law was changed to recapture the spirit, but as a person who walks to work every day, I can tell you that the spirit is still lost on many sections of the Meadville footpaths.

Accentuating the positive, I'll say that the award for best sidewalk, consistently, Monday through Friday goes to the Crawford County Historical Society on Chestnut Street. There may be snow and ice on either end, but the section that is their responsibility is clear, and if possible, dry from edge to edge and end to end including the strip leading up to the front door. I don't know if it's volunteers, employees or people contracted for the sole purpose of sidewalk clearing, but whoever it is does a bang up job.

The other end of the spectrum, of course, is really bad, so bad that if I can, I jump the plow ridge into the street to walk. These are, for the most part, rental properties occupied by Allegheny College students who have no thought in their heads for the walking public. It's the owner's responsibility anyway, I suppose, but what I know is that the snow is over a foot deep in some places, and the worst sections are where high-speed plows have sloshed icy chunks over the ridge, making the footpath a dangerous obstacle course of big icy chunks across the entire width.

I have slipped and fallen twice since I started walking over the wintry walkways of Meadville. So far I've picked myself up and brushed myself off with no damage. The good news is - the snow will probably stop by June.

Lake Effect

We've had it described to us by numerous people on numerous occasions since we first expressed interest in moving to the Lake Erie area. Moisture from the lake is absorbed into the atmosphere above, turned into snow, and dumped on the surrounding countryside. Meadville, they told us, is pretty much at the far side if the lake effect belt. Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don't. The day before yesterday we witnessed this phenomenon first hand.

The Reverend Carmen was covering for the Youngstown, Ohio minister while he was on vacation, and it happened that a Youngstown member needed a memorial service performed during that time. So Saturday, with dense snow falling all around us, we set out on snowy roads for Youngstown. Rev. Carmen kept asking if we were crazy to be doing this in such obviously awful weather, but onward we trekked.

About thirty miles south on Interstate 79, we suddenly ran out of the snow. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the roads were dry. We got to Youngstown on the most beautiful day we'd seen in weeks.

She did the service, we ate an early supper, and then lit out back to Meadville. Right around the same part of I-79, we slammed back into snow, worse than the morning's offering, blinding almost white-out snow, and it was impossible to see the lines on the road. To make matters worse, it was getting dark. We'd been making a shopping list on the way, but it was abandoned with our effort to stay on the highway. At last we came to the Meadville exit, but alas, no-one had exited there in a while. There were no tracks to follow, nothing but a guard rail to indicate where the exit might be.

We reached 322 safely and steered for home. There would be no stops along the way. We got here and she tried to back in - to no avail. She trudged through deep snow, leaving the car at the end of the driveway while I trotted out my new snow blower. I snew blew and shoveled, backed the car in and shut the garage - SAFE!

The next morning I had to snow blow again to get out for church. There was a pretty good crowd there, even with the snow still pouring down. Here in Lake Effectville, you don't let snow stop you. If you do, you'll be pretty much stopped from the end of November until the end of April.

Re CALC Ulating!

My new job with the local Meadville PA Sherwin Williams store is titled "Part Time Sales Associate." The short term is "Delivery Boy." I did not know this when I signed on, but it became clear during my second week when the assistant manager, Vinnie, outlined a long list of things I needed to know about this job - including outfitting the delivery van with whatever personal stuff (gloves, boots, maps) might come in handy during my many deliveries. As it sunk in that this was really what the job is all about, a little spark of joy fired up for "The Gospel Of Rand McNally." I've been waiting for months for a Gospel-worthy trip to come along, and last week one did.

In addition to deliveries, I also do trips to other stores to pick up product we are short on when a customer needs it and can't wait for the next regular Wednesday delivery. I've gone to Franklin, about twenty five miles away, Erie, about thirty five miles, and last week I was told to come in early, dress comfortably, MapQuest a route, bring my GPS and whatever else I might need, and drive to Solon, Ohio, a southern suburb of Cleveland about ninety miles away. I bought road snacks the night before, packed my Rand McNally Road Atlas (of course!) and everything else into my backpack and made it to work well before 11:00.

Before starting out I programmed my destination into Hermione, our GPS. She has a British accent and thinks she knows everything. Hence the name. I had a pretty good idea how I wanted to go, but it's always interesting to hear Hermione's version of things. Sometimes she has a really good idea. Mostly, though, she is fixated on Interstate Highways and will try everything in her arsenal to steer me toward them.

Stage one of the trip: get out of Meadville. In this case, the way to go was to head west on US 322. Hermione was very much in favor of that plan. When I passed right by Interstate 79, she didn't object at all, which came as a shock to me. Then she surprised me again by telling me to turn right on State Road 98. Thinking maybe she knew something, and not having an opportunity to check my map, I turned. Almost immediately I remembered that I had been on this stretch of road before, from one delivery northwest of Meadville to another due south. Hmmm. So I found myself on the map and decided to ride with Her for a while longer. When I came to 198, she directed me to turn left, which I was planning to do anyway. She could have sent me right, to I-79 up there. She didn't. Hmmmm.

So we continued west, on into Ohio, and there she tipped her hand. At State Road 7 she told me to turn right, which would take me directly to Interstate 90 to Cleveland. Aha! So I turned left. "Re - Calc - Ulating!" she hissed. I know this side of her pretty well by now. First she tries to talk me into a U-turn to bring me back into her clutches. Then she directs me onto side roads that will soon bring me back around to her way of thinking. I was going to US 6, where I would turn west again. I knew she wouldn't like it, but I didn't care. If worse comes to worst, I can mute her snippy little self. What I can't do is change her Estimated Time of Arrival, which she adds to every time she recalculates.

As I worked my way west and south, in addition to Hermione's disappointment in me, I also had to watch out for Amish horse and buggy units. I passed three or four going my way, and a few going the other way. It's that part of the country. It wasn't pouring down snow for the first time in weeks, so it was a good day for horse and buggying around.

I turned south on State Road 11, a limited access washboard that I endured for twenty miles or so (actually it was five - it only seemed like twenty) until I exited onto US 322, the highway I started out on way back in Meadville. As I headed west again, Hermione finally got back on board with my initial plan - 322 to State Road 44 to US 422 to Solon. We got along famously for a good while, and when we got to Solon, she guided me smoothly to my destination. Five minutes to use the rest room, load the paint and do the paperwork, and we were back on the road again.

I don't know if she was tired of arguing with me or what, but she took me right back to Pennsylvania the way I wanted to go. We had a slight disagreement at State Road 7, which would have taken me around the north side of the lake. I stayed on 322 around the south side, and made it back to the store well before four.

Ducks Walking on Fish And Other Delights

So we've been to Erie I think five times now. We haven't gone to downtown Erie, just the myriad shopping opportunities on Peach Street near I 90. We've even come home in the dark once, and didn't make any wrong turns - there are a couple of tricky places.

When our little miss Yinny Yin Yin was ailing, we found the vet's office recommended to us. It is about three miles north near Saegertown. Carmen did a wedding at a hall about five miles out of town to (I think) the east. She got lost going to the rehearsal, but the wedding day went just fine. A couple of weeks ago we drove to Woodcock Dam where, it turns out, many many people from Greater Meadville go to walk - with or without dogs - in the fresh air outside the Big City.

Carmen has gone to conferences in Ohio - one in Columbus and one out beyond Cleveland almost to Toledo. If I had gone I might have stories to tell, but somebody has to feed the cat and not be a minister. Turns out I excel at both of those tasks

Two weeks ago, our friend Karen came from Orlando. This gave us the golden opportunity we've been waiting for: Pymatuning Spillway, out by Linesville twenty some miles west of here, boasts the area's biggest attraction. The fish are protected and people throw them bread. They are big and they are numerous. Where there are people casting their bread upon the waters, there are also ducks. Put "ducks walk on fish" into your search engine and you'll see pictures of Pymatuning Spillway. So on a cold, rainy day, we drove west on Conneaut Lake Road, through Conneaut Lake the town, and on to Linesville. As luck would have it, the center of town was in the throes of a road repair project, and the turnoff to Pymatuning was blocked off. But after four times through the intersection we were able to ascertain that many people were turning left a few blocks further on, so we followed them around to the road to Pymatuning.

It turned out that we were the only ones willing to stand out there in the rain throwing bread that Monday morning. Even the fish were hesitant to come to the surface. We saw some but not many. It was good weather for ducks, however, and three loaves of day old surplus bread from the day old surplus bread store went to the ducks. So now we've done it. As long as nobody around here finds out that the ducks didn't walk on any fish that day, we can get away with saying we've been there done that and check it off the list.

So that's the latest from the exploring northwestern Pennsylvania front. More later, I'm sure.

The Big City

In 1987 we moved from Vero Beach, Florida to St. Cloud, Florida, about 75 miles away, to start our new life together in a new locality. We were completely anonymous and happy to be that way. Carmen had a job lined up at a title company in downtown St. Cloud. I had nothing, but soon got a job lined up at a plant nursery in Narcoossee, about seven miles from home. I started out riding a bicycle, but soon bought a small motorcycle. This opened the door to a bigger and better job in Orlando, 25 miles from home.



What this rambling is getting at is that when I worked in Narcoossee, seven miles from St. Cloud and fifteen miles from Orlando, the Narcoosians used to talk about going into town for one reason or another, and I came to realize after a while that in Narcoossee, "The Big City" was St. Cloud, gateway to Kissimmee!



We hadn't lived in Meadville for long when we realized that "The Big City" where everyone goes for shopping and entertainment, is Erie. It's 35 miles up the road, either Interstate 79 if you want to get there fast, or Main Street or Park Avenue out of Meadville, each a pretty country drive which meanders some and changes names a couple of times, but soon enough becomes Peach Street, where the big furniture stores and the Target and the Sam's, a bunch of chain restaurants and pretty much everything Meadville lacks is located. There's even an international airport in Erie where you can fly to Cleveland, Pittsburgh , Detroit or London, Ontario.



We actually flew in and out of there back in April for our candidating week (see "Joy In Meadville" a few postings back) but we were only there for the airport and car rental services. It was mid-July when we found ourselves in need of an air conditioner and the local stores were all sold out! We called around and found one in Waterford, up US 19, almost to Erie, and decided to go ahead up there. We've been back twice to The Big City!



Of course, the folks who live in Saegertown, Conneaut Lake, Woodcock, Geneva and Cochranton think of Meadville as "The Big City!"

And all of us, Erie included, occasionally go to Pittsburgh or Cleveland, each about 90 miles from here, when we want to go to a REAL big city. I guess it's all relative.

Small Town Travel

One of the pleasures of living in a small town is that I can walk to the grocery store, the bank, Carmen's church, the haircut place, the post office - pretty much anywhere I want to go - in less than a half hour. Just this morning I walked to the downtown supermarket at 6:00 because we were out of coffee ! ! ! Then later I walked to the bank at 9:00 and opened my own checking account.

Walking downtown is, more often than not (and not at 6:00am) a social occasion. I see people I know nearly every trip, and people I don't know are likely to smile and say hello. A far cry from Boston.

I generally walk Chestnut Street, the main drag running east and west from downtown to our house. It goes past a couple of funeral homes, an assisted living place, several churches, the Y, Diamond Park, the Historical Society of Crawford County, the local office supply store, the Academy (live)Theatre, a bunch of restaurants, an ice cream shop and - The Stereoscopic Museum! Someday I have to go in there. It's only open a couple of afternoons a week.

Chestnut Street dead-ends into the Downtown Mall, anchored by a Big Lots. The mall contains a liquor store, a couple of flea market styled miscellaneous crap stores, a haircut place, a snack and sandwich shop, a Dollar General and a few more stores I can't recall. The Greyhound bus stops out front, and tickets can be bought at one of the miscellaneous crap stores. The public transit buses also stop at the big bus shelter out front.

Way out yonder on the other side of the tracks is where the interlopers reside: Home Depot, Walmart, Staples and the Giant Eagle grocery store. It's too far to walk and I wouldn't want to anyway!

It reminds me of Vero Beach, Florida. I lived there for about sixteen of my first thirty-four years. I walked everywhere. When I worked at a grapefruit packing house, I started work at 5:30am about once a week, and I could pretty much expect to be pulled over by a cop in the downtown area each time. I thought about that today as I walked downtown at 5:45. The other difference was: I was wearing a hoodie in August! That NEVER happened in Vero Beach.