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Let's not stop going (on the road in Ohio)


November 24, 2005 - 3:06 a.m.

We come to you live from Elyria, Ohio for this talk tonight.

What in the world am I doing in Elyria, Ohio? It was where there was snow. I wanted to go chase the snow, so I came here. There's something about driving all night through snow that I've always liked... if you're lucky, it chases the numb-nuts Pennsylvanians and Virginians off the road (though in my case, they were out in force). I like those nights when I have the entire Interstate Highway System to myself, or largely so.

The Volkswagen is spectacularly good in snow and ice. I drove it hard, in situations where I knew the Saab would have gotten a bit timid or hyperactive, and the VW handled just fine. The traction control/antiskid is unobtrusive but effective, and the antilock brakes are addictive... I found myself nailing the brakes just to feel the ABS grumble under my right foot.

But mostly, driving at night in difficult weather acts as a sort of bandpass filter on my thoughts. It doesn't occupy so much of my concentration that I can't think at all, but it's not like sleep, or the attempt at it, which leaves me way too much leeway to think about things that are better left unthunk. If you have a fast car, a road to yourself, and an iPod, you have your own movie.

I had dinner at a TGIFriday's in Washington, Pennsylvania. It was the only place that was still open. Usually when I travel, I want to eat somewhere local, something you can't get McEverywhere. Alas, the dumb-ass Virginians on I-79 had been driving so slow that it took an extra hour to get there, by which time anything locally-owned in town had closed. When I came out of the place, this Pennsylvania-looking woman came up to me saying she had come out shopping and forgot her purse and now didn't have enough gas to get home. I gave her five bucks. I didn't care if she needed gas or not, it sounded absurd enough to be entertaining. I think she'd have been better off if she wasn't driving some big pig of a late-Eightie Buick. The five bucks would barely move that thing out of the driveway, I imagine.

I got back on the road and made it up into Ohio, cutting through the middle of the snow.

I realized that I haven't been in Ohio since the last time I was here with Nancy, which would have been just this time three years ago now. I don't think I've ever publicly told the whole story of that voyage (I'd have to go back into my archives), and I know I haven't told it here, since this only goes back two and a half years, but it was an extremely surreal journey and it changed the course of my life. And it made a prominent Ohio Democrat happy.

I used to go through Ohio quite often, going back and forth from New York to Michigan 25 years ago, and then later in the 1980s when I was engaged to a woman whose family used to live near Toledo. For all I know, they still do, but I really haven't bothered keeping track these last 15 or 20 years or so. They could be on the Moon or in Arizona or a pine box. I do know that my ex-fiancee is a professor at the University of Dayton now, and is married.

Driving over to this hotel in Elyria, up near the Ohio Turnpike, a lot of things started to look familiar, and I realized that I had been at this exact spot almost 25 years ago, driving from Michigan to New Jersey. But almost none of the stuff that's here now was here then. It was all empty space in 1981. Maybe it should be even now.

A woman I've been emailing (we had one quite excellent date a couple of weeks ago, then she had to go to Alaska) asked me why in the world I went to Ohio through the snow and ice. I told her basically that the snow and ice was the whole point, and they just happened to be in eastern Ohio. I am not sure she understands, but then again, I'm not sure I do, either. The thing is, I don't much care about understanding. Sometimes, you just have to get up and go. Like Kerouac. Let's go, man, and let's not stop going till we get there.

Tomorrow, I am getting up, getting out, and going to see Lake Erie. I haven't seen it -- or any other Great Lake -- in almost fifteen years. It's time.


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