![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hey, I'm in Seville! That is, Seville, Ohio, burial place of The Kentucky Giant. No, that's not why I'm here—I'm on my way to Louisville for Terrastock 7, and this is how far I got in one day of driving. According to Google Maps, the shortest way from Boston to Louisville is to go west on I-90 through Buffalo and Erie, PA and hang a left at Cleveland onto I-71. I thought about stopping early and staying in eerie Erie to check out the Great Lake in the morning, but it was only 10pm and I wasn't feeling tired so I kept going until midnight.
It turns out that random Super 8 motels in the middle of Ohio (and also New York State Thruway Travel Plazas) have free high-speed wireless Internet. Much faster than at True Grounds or Logan Airport or any other public wi-fi I've used before. Maybe it's just because no one here in flyover country ever uses the Internet so I have all the bandwidth to myself. Or maybe the future has finally arrived! I feel kind of silly for having brought books to read, thinking I'd be offline and bored. Instead I can be civilized and try to catch up with my Google Reader feeds. Or, you know, post to my LiveJournal.
When I left this morning, I planned to stop by a geocache near my house to pick up a travel bug to transport to Kentucky. But despite having already found the cache (a year ago), I could not manage to find it again today, feh. I could have gone back home to read the logs for clues (turns out maybe I wasn't digging through the leaves enough) but I was frustrated and wanted to just get on the road. Oh well, maybe at least I can pick up a travel bug in KY and bring it back home.
I also stopped in at the Marshall Street disc golf store in Leicester, MA and picked up four new discs. I've been using a beginner set of discs since last summer, and I've been realizing that they're a bit too light to get the kind of distance and accuracy that I would like to improve my game. The store is just the lower half of a house in the middle of the woods (next to a nice-looking course, but I didn't want to take the time to play—maybe on my way back if I can get there before dusk next Tuesday), but once I entered through the garage I was greeted by a huge display of literally thousands of discs of all different makes and models. I had no idea how to choose from that many options, but with the help of the friendly salesdude (most of whose jargon went over my head) I semi-randomly picked out a putter, a mid-range, and two drivers, one relatively overstable and one relatively understable. There's a course fairly near where I'm staying in Louisville, and I'll have a free day on Thursday since the music doesn't start until 7pm, so if the weather cooperates I can try out my new discs and see how much difference they make.
Near Buffalo along I-90 there is a sign that says "Welcome to Seneca Nation! You are now leaving"... and that's as much as I could read while driving past it at 80mph. There was a lot more on the sign, I guess explaining the land claim by the Seneca Indian nation. But there wasn't really even a place to pull over to read the rest of it. Maybe they should spread it over several signs, Burma Shave style.
Not long after that, I passed SUNY Fredonia. I imagined the dean of the school as Rufus T. Firefly.
The Clarence Travel Plaza was one of most pleasant rest stops I've ever taken. Despite being near Buffalo, their Fuddrucker's did not have buffalo burgers like the one in Jordan's Furniture in Reading, MA, but it was still a tasty burger to eat while reading email using the aforementioned speedy wi-fi. But also, the longhaired surfer dude who took my order was genuinely courteous and friendly, as was the really cute girl at the gift shop where I bought a King-Size package of York Peppermint Patties for dessert. I keep forgetting that once you get out of the Boston/NYC/DC megalopolis, people are actually nice to their customers. It was refreshing.
I recommend road trips. A long drive alone with good tunes on the stereo is definitely a form of meditation. I've been in kind of a rut the last couple months, so I'm hoping this will help cleanse my mental palate for when I get back.
It turns out that random Super 8 motels in the middle of Ohio (and also New York State Thruway Travel Plazas) have free high-speed wireless Internet. Much faster than at True Grounds or Logan Airport or any other public wi-fi I've used before. Maybe it's just because no one here in flyover country ever uses the Internet so I have all the bandwidth to myself. Or maybe the future has finally arrived! I feel kind of silly for having brought books to read, thinking I'd be offline and bored. Instead I can be civilized and try to catch up with my Google Reader feeds. Or, you know, post to my LiveJournal.
When I left this morning, I planned to stop by a geocache near my house to pick up a travel bug to transport to Kentucky. But despite having already found the cache (a year ago), I could not manage to find it again today, feh. I could have gone back home to read the logs for clues (turns out maybe I wasn't digging through the leaves enough) but I was frustrated and wanted to just get on the road. Oh well, maybe at least I can pick up a travel bug in KY and bring it back home.
I also stopped in at the Marshall Street disc golf store in Leicester, MA and picked up four new discs. I've been using a beginner set of discs since last summer, and I've been realizing that they're a bit too light to get the kind of distance and accuracy that I would like to improve my game. The store is just the lower half of a house in the middle of the woods (next to a nice-looking course, but I didn't want to take the time to play—maybe on my way back if I can get there before dusk next Tuesday), but once I entered through the garage I was greeted by a huge display of literally thousands of discs of all different makes and models. I had no idea how to choose from that many options, but with the help of the friendly salesdude (most of whose jargon went over my head) I semi-randomly picked out a putter, a mid-range, and two drivers, one relatively overstable and one relatively understable. There's a course fairly near where I'm staying in Louisville, and I'll have a free day on Thursday since the music doesn't start until 7pm, so if the weather cooperates I can try out my new discs and see how much difference they make.
Near Buffalo along I-90 there is a sign that says "Welcome to Seneca Nation! You are now leaving"... and that's as much as I could read while driving past it at 80mph. There was a lot more on the sign, I guess explaining the land claim by the Seneca Indian nation. But there wasn't really even a place to pull over to read the rest of it. Maybe they should spread it over several signs, Burma Shave style.
Not long after that, I passed SUNY Fredonia. I imagined the dean of the school as Rufus T. Firefly.
The Clarence Travel Plaza was one of most pleasant rest stops I've ever taken. Despite being near Buffalo, their Fuddrucker's did not have buffalo burgers like the one in Jordan's Furniture in Reading, MA, but it was still a tasty burger to eat while reading email using the aforementioned speedy wi-fi. But also, the longhaired surfer dude who took my order was genuinely courteous and friendly, as was the really cute girl at the gift shop where I bought a King-Size package of York Peppermint Patties for dessert. I keep forgetting that once you get out of the Boston/NYC/DC megalopolis, people are actually nice to their customers. It was refreshing.
I recommend road trips. A long drive alone with good tunes on the stereo is definitely a form of meditation. I've been in kind of a rut the last couple months, so I'm hoping this will help cleanse my mental palate for when I get back.