I’ve always loved Brooks Judd’s Ten Items posts so I’ll steal his idea today and tell you about my summer vacation. My real summer vacation is happening right now at the Good Old Fashioned Festival near Hollister, but my “vacation” just past (notice the quotes) took place last week on the eastern seaboard of our great U.S. of A. I was the designated driver for a whirlwind tour of prospective colleges for my rising high school senior daughter, Juliet. We saw 7 colleges in eight days and drove close to 3000 miles in the process.
1) Drivers in the northeast are insane.
On a three lane urban thruway my tendency is to drive at about the speed limit and look for turns into either of the adjoining lanes while I am in the unfamiliar territory. If you do that in the northeast you will be passed on both sides very rapidly by drivers who are obviously upset that you are not driving ten to twenty miles above the speed limit like everybody else.
2) Tolls in the northeast are insane.
I think I’ll move to Delaware when I retire. Their taxes are low and every time an out of state driver goes through their tiny state on interstate 95, they collect four dollars. What a racket! When you drive I-95, “keep your money in your clothes” as the old song says, because you will have to cough up cash every few miles from Maryland to New Jersey. It’s always a new state or a new bridge or something.
3) Northeastern Highway patrol officers are all out on break eating doughnuts.
I think the reason northeastern drivers drive so aggressively is because they are so pissed off at the high tolls that they figure they are within their rights to drive just as fast as they want to. What the heck, they pay their fines every day. And when the money is rolling in like that to the state coffers, what pressure can there be for a patrol officer to add to the loot by chasing down one of the offenders? The way those maniacs drive they’ll probably just waste gas trying to chase them anyway.
4) Many people in the South actually like Bluegrass music.
After our madcap college tour, I was able to spend a few days visiting with my family in the upstate of my native Carolinas. We did some shopping one rainy day at the Mast Store in Greenville, South Carolina. While I waited for my daughter to try on every item in the store, I sat on a box and played some games on my iPad. I noticed the store background music and enjoyed listening to a nice old time banjo tune. The next tune was a vocal by Laurie Lewis which I liked even better. I’ve never heard Bluegrass music piped into a store in California.
5) The Southeast is a really beautiful place.
Green growing on green. That’s what it seems like when a Californian visits the Southeast during a drought year (or any other year). We went for a nature walk one morning with a retired Clemson University professor. He has led a first of every month walk for many years through a preserve that will soon be designated the official botanical garden for the state. This guy knows the latin name for just about any plant you ask him about and if it has medicinal value, he’ll tell you all about the way it’s been used by the indians of the area for centuries. But the forest is so diverse there, Dave was unable to exactly identify one of the trees we saw, although he could place its genus and related species.
6) Colleges are very expensive these days.
Scholarships are a good thing. I sure hope we can get one. Maybe that way we can send Juliet’s brother to college too some day.
OK, quite a bit fewer than ten items it seems. But I’ll settle for 60% today because I have to pack for Bolado Park. I’m not looking forward to the drive through San Francisco traffic but at least I won’t have to worry about northeastern drivers and there’s only one toll. And hopefully I’ll see some of you folks when I get there.
