honeymoon - day 6

saturday morning we left chatham and headed for salem, ma. we were going to head into boston and go on the sam adam's brewery tour but decided to rearrange our schedule a little bit, which turned out to be a pretty bad idea. apparently salem is the place to be for the entire month of october and as we rolled into town we were greeted with bumper to bumper traffic and $20 parking for their october harvest festival or whatever it was. we were hoping to go to the witch museum and pirate museum but they had lines around the block waiting to get in. we did manage to see the house on the left, which is the "house of seven gables" and apparently is famous and in some book. i had to google "gable" to figure out precisely what that meant. after fighting crowds for a long time, i called the 800 number for the sam adam's brewery to find out that they were already closed for the day and not open the next day.

we left salem and headed for boston, where the roads make even less sense than the mixing bowl and the new woodrow wilson bridge interchanges. we checked into our hotel in cambridge to find a gay jewish wedding going on in the courtyard. we sat for a while, watched the last few minutes of forrest gump on hbo and then hopped into a cab to visit my friend rahul and his wife emily and to check out their new house and get dinner. i had spoken with rahul earlier in the day about what to do for dinner and made some flippant remark about ethiopean food, which is how we ended up at an ethiopean restaurant for dinner. rahul and emily treated us as part of their wedding gift and it was quite delicious.

after dinner we hopped on the T, rode back to the hotel and passed out.

to the ladies on the arlington hiker/biker trails

it's wonderful that you are out exercising with your friends in this beautiful weather. i was out there too. and i know half the fun while you're out is gossiping about who is dating whom and what was on oprah yesterday and all, but you really shouldn't be power walking three people wide on the trails. especially in the summer when there are lots of other people out, some of whom are going the other direction and would appreciate more than a sliver of pavement to run/ride on and some who would like to pass without running into bikers come head on in the other direction. really, even two wide is questionable. thanks.

open letter to an impatient driver

dear woman in the suv behind me on four mile run this afternoon,

i was just trying to be a courteous driver. you should be aware of the fact that you are legally required to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk. maybe you were confused by the fact that they were standing in the median and you weren't sure if that qualified as "in a crosswalk" or not. i know it was the end of the day and we all want to get home, but a couple extra seconds won't kill you.

you should probably take a moment and reflect on your life and what type of person you want to be. do you want to be the person who stops at a crosswalk so that three young girls can cross the street safely, or do you want to be the person who honks at, and tries to go around, the person stopping for those kids?

thanks,
dan

stop denting my fucking car

dear past and future parking neighbors,

for christ sake, stop ramming your doors into my fucking car. if you feel it necessary to throw your door open with wanton disregard for other peoples property, at least have the decency to leave a damn note. even just an apology without your name or insurance info would at least make me feel like you have a soul. honestly, i've had this car just over a year now and have two door dings already. it's really soured me on the experiences of owning new cars and sharing the planet with other humans.

to the miata guy at the lab who put the dent in my altima and left a note, i got it. no worries. that car was a pile of junk anyway. i apologize for not calling.

all our problems are solved, almost

end foreign energy dependency. stop global warming. reduce congestion. how you ask? two miracles of science in one day? no. i give you the 1962 peel p50.

obesity in america

this morning i witnessed a school bus hold up three lanes of traffic waiting for one kid to get on. it then, and i shit you not, drove half a block to the school and let the kid off. i've included a diagram illustrating what happened for you visual learners.

I'm an ass.

To the Person in the car in front of me at the intersection of Contee and 197,

I apologize for honking. I didn't realize there was a good reason for you not going when the light turned green. I figured you were just an idiot like everyone else. If it's any consolation, I felt like a total jerkwad when I finally saw the ambulance.

Sorry,
Dan

Road Trip - Final Destination

To prove the universe is circular, the trip ended much in the same way it started. Sitting in traffic, trying to get across the Bay Bridge. Our trip through Tahoe tacked on a little bit of time and a few miles but we made it. We got to Mike's new place and unloaded the car. Mike's girlfriend and I carried stuff in while he went to look for a place to park. When he came back about an hour later, we went out for a slice of pizza and a beer. All in all, a very cool trip through a very BIG country. It was nice going in the winter, hotels were cheaper, no crowds, no burning hot sun in the desert. I'm glad I had the opportunity. I spent the next few days running around visiting college and high school friends and had a great time. Being back at work totally sucks.

Total Miles: 3359.2

Road Trip - Day 1

So I'm on a road trip. A friend of mine, who we'll call "Mike" (for the sake of anonymity) is moving to San Francisco and invited me to tag along for the drive across the country. I've never really been on a big road trip so I accepted. Today is the first day on the road.

Departure Point: Washington DC
Departure Time: 6:00am
Destination: Nashville, TN
Miles Today: 696.4

Well, we got off to kinda a bad start. Mike was about 50 minutes late picking me up and we got stuck in some DC morning rush hour traffic. Apparently there was an accident on the beltway.


Our route today took us out 66 and down 81 through the Shenendoah Valley, through Bristol VA, into Tenessee, then through Knoxville and on to Nashville for a delightful stay in Best Western - Music Row.


We made a few stops along the way, the first of which was Natural Bridge. Now truthfully, I have been looking forward to seeing all kinds of kitschy things along the way, but was not fully prepared for what I saw on the way to Natural Bridge. You see, the really silly stuff according to my research doesn't really start until maybe somewhere in Texas or maybe New Mexico so when I saw this, I got pretty excited



The Natural Bridge itself is a rock formation that at one time was one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. While, there, if so inclined you can also visit the Wax Museum & Factory, The Natural Bridge Zoo, some sort of Dinosaur land attraction and play the lamest looking mini-golf course I've ever seen.


The next stop was in Tenesee. The Appalachian Caverns. There seem to be lots of caverns around. Endless Caverns, Forbidden Caverns, Luray Caverns, and on and on... I think once you've seen one, you've seen them all. This one claims to have some interesting bats, but the ones we saw were 1) tiny and 2) hibernating. Not so interesting.

At the moment, we're on I-40 heading west towards Knoxville and have just hit the 500 mile mark from DC.