DAY 2–PEACHAM TO PORTLAND–CONNEAUT OHIO

Day 2-Conneaut OH

Dearest Readers,

Meet Richard, leaving the Microtel in Verona this morning. “Any luck, he asked me”? meaning did I win anything at the big casino in town? His Cadillac was losing battery life (I was there when he called road service from the hotel lobby.) He and his lady friend were lost last night trying to find their room on the second floor. (I was there again with Etta, going straight to my room.)  He was packing his car this morning as I was packing mine. The universe was telling me to take his picture. Yesterday I described gamblers as lean, hungry and perhaps too tanned. I was wrong… Richard seems to be a decent guy with a bumbling and slightly unlucky persona.

Today (yesterday at this posting) amounted to seeing the infinity of  I-90 from start to finish of the day. Herds of roiling clouds raced from the Great Lakes, in the direction of where I’d been. Sometimes they turned dark gray and menacing, pelting me in the “toaster” car with hurricane winds and hail. Sometimes we got a respite and lovely breaks of sun.  

Green creature Wai, sunbathed briefly on the dashboard around Erie PA. 

Etta James ignores him. He has no smell and he is not food.

I drove west, past Syracuse, and Rochester and the vineyards of the Finger Lakes–(Eleven long skinny bodies of water like clawed gouges caused by receding glaciers eons ago.) I skirted Lakes Ontario and Erie, drove around Buffalo and proceeded relentlessly west and slightly south as I passed over the Pennsylvania line near Erie and quickly entered Ohio as the sun burst from the morass of cloud cover. I found a Days Inn in Conneaut , pronounced Connie-ought. It’s a wide spot on a secondary highway off interstate 90. They have a Truck Stop and a Days Inn, a Burger King, a Subway and a place with a hand written sign saying “FOOD”. I saw a red-bearded Amish man in McDonalds wearing a well-made broad-brimmed straw hat, and what looked like hand-made dark blue cotton bib overalls. He waved directions to me as I backed out of a parking space . I did not dare to take his picture. Shame on me for letting an artistic moment pass un-documented. More chances to come I hope.

 Sun erupts like God as I cross into Ohio in the picture below. 

The receptionist at the Days Inn desk tells me we are on Central time in Ohio, but how could this be when the internet tells me this transition will happen on the western side of Indiana? My iPhone steadfastly refuses to switch automatically to Central Time. I feel lost temporally (not geographically) and somewhere in limbo zone. So be it. Time for breakfast and being on the road.