Screw this "turkey" thing! (on the road from Sandusky, Ohio)

Well, I found my dinner. I followed the old blue route, US Route 6, west from Elyria and Lorain along the Lake Erie shore. Erie was rather upset with itself... I drove up through poor, sad old Lorain to the lake. You can't actually drive right up to the lake from the center of Lorain... the US Steel Lorain Tubing Works occupies over a mile of lakefront between worn-out, boarded up downtown Lorain east to Ohio Route 57 and beyond. What lies along its edges are worn-out steelworker bars and used car lots, as well as sidings filled with hopper cars from the most entertaining-sounding rail line in the world: COKE EXPRESS.

Calm down... the stuff in the hoppers is black, not white.

Along the lakefront north of downtown, I pulled up to the seawall and immediately slid into it. The lake had coated the last 50 feet of parking lot with icy rime, and the Volkswagen bonked against the concrete retaining wall, knocking a piece of front-end trim loose. The wind was terrific, easily 45mph. The seagulls -- hundreds of them -- were basically flying in place. I went west out of Lorain, through Vermilion, Huron and then Sandusky.

Sandusky was my late grandmother's favorite town... I was never sure why, I think she just liked the sound of the name... SANNNNNNNNdusky! In the off-seasoon, Sandusky looks like any other worn-out lakefront city, with half the businesses closed or out of business, but I've been there during the summer, and it changes character completely.

A bit of trivia: Sandusky was originally called Portland, and nowadays is known mostly as the place where Cedar Point ("The A-MAZE-ment Park!") is located, and the source of many traffic jams on the Turnpike and Ohio Route 2 in the summer as thousands of people from Detroit seek to escape their worn-out lakefront city.

I headed east again, and found a place to have dinner and write. Nothing amazing, just a generic sort of Ryan's steak buffet place that was open (more like "jammed") for Thanksgiving. I figured it'd be a bunch of single people passing through, like me, but judging from the number of multigenerational family clumps showing up, it appears that locally, it's popular for Grandma to say, "fuck this 'turkey' thing, let's all go to Ryan's!" I mean, groups of 15 or 20 people. In any case, the guy behind the carving counter sensed my need and sawed me off a big ole hunk of turkey, more than I'd eat as a first dose at home, and I was happy. Just give me some turkey, stuffing, salad and iced tea, and I can holiday pretty much anywhere. Just keep your screaming kids at a safe distance.

In this morning's mail, I got a pretty hilarious, if bizarre, Hallmark holiday e-card from my friend Terri (no, not that Terri... hi, TK and TB!) that sounds like it was written by the South Park writers and animators. I don't think I can link to it, so just take my word, it was pretty cool.

So, I guess I get to go home. Or something. Or at least start home. The gas here is incredibly inexpensive (in Lorain, the cheap stuff was $1.92 a gallon) and there's no traffic out today. Time to put the cruise on, put the Volkswagen out on the Turnpike and have a nice nap for a while.