Finished packing much later than expected. Stopped at Tim Horton's for coffee, iced cappocino, and two days' worth of Tim-bits. Stopped at Mickey D's for bacon cheeseburger and fries. With a car running on vapors, stopped at the gas station to fill up -- not a personal best -- only $90.
Then -- pedal to the metal!!!
For the first time in nearly six years, I head for beautiful New Hampshire to learn how to do this.
After 45 minutes, hot and yawning, at the very crowded border crossing, feared that I might have to stop and take a nap ten minutes out of Ontario. However, caffeine kicked in, with a massive dose of Atlantic Canadian fiddle music, and the hours sped by, alert, relaxed, breathin' in the scenery.
Beautiful day for a drive across New York State. Following (in reverse) the path described in the folk song about the Erie Canal: "From Albany to Buffalo... we'll make Rome 'fore six o'clock..."
Rome -- we're planning to go there in the fall! -- yet here I am, driving through New York, and there it is: Rome! And then -- wait for it -- Verona! Well, I gotta check this out. Besides, I haven't looked at a map yet and am not too sure where I am. So I head off the highway, and off to Rome/Verona.
Oops. Forgot about the part where a departure from the Thruway on a "whim" means paying a big old toll to get off. Okay. All roads lead to Rome.
Or not. Rome is 8 miles off the highway. So I'll settle for Verona. Not much to Verona, as it happens (not that I really got into the town, just a highway junction). But it did offer one outstanding attraction.
God bless America.
Now I reside in a hotel in East Greenbush. Just past Albany, home of the profoundly dysfunctional state government, which spends its time seeking ever more ways to squeeze the life out of the whole state with some of the most outrageous taxes in the country. Bu
t as of yesterday, they've apparently found a perq they can afford: now I can marry my girlfriend.Dude at the Daily Caller sums up the paradoxes of New York life purty good.
You can marry a person of the same gender in New York City, but you can't eat your own wedding cake without Bloomberg slapping it out of your hands.Transgender = no problem. Transfat = illegal.
Heh.
Getting late.
