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.
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