This post is not about the RinkUnion, nor is it about famous, nor yet is it about BreyerFest, which took place in Lexington, Kentucky this past weekend. No, this is a post about all the times before, after, and in between. It's about places and roads and fast food. I will tell you about two wacky types of asphalt with fascinating audio properties, and I will also tell you about the single nastiest fast food chain anywhere in the United States. This paragraph is an unusually transparent example of a "hook" -- the opening that draws people into a piece of writing in the hopes of sustaining them to the end. Let me tell you, if the promise of an analysis of asphalt does not immediately intrigue you, well, you can't say I didn't try.

Yesterday, I was at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. This morning, I was in the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania. I type this now from my desktop computer in New Hampshire, which always feels strange to type on after going a week and a half without typing on anything but, a couple of times, on famous' laptop. The keys feel funny, and the motions involved with typing are familiar but distant enough in time as to seem nostalgic. Strangest of all, though, was when, on Saturday or so, I remembered that I work for a living and would be returning to my job three days later. I had forgotten I work, because in the week prior, I had lived a little bit of so many different lives. The more sudden changes your lifestyle goes through, the longer ago the past seems.

We set out on Thursday the 17th, packing the car to the brim and hoping to reach mid-Pennsylvania before we stopped at a cheap motel to spend the night. Leen picked me up from work, and we were moving at 12:30pm and arrived in Clearwater at 9:45pm. Between the following day and last night, the entire town had its name changed to Clearfield and swapped out all the road signs to reflect this change. My Pennsylvania map still says Clearwater, so I know I am not crazy, but ha ha, this was a very funny joke on us, because on the return trip I figured we'd stop at Clearwater again, but since there isn't any Clearwater anymore, I ended up going 90 more miles in the middle of the night, finally pulling into a Comfort Inn at 1:30 in the morning.

It is well understood by regular readers of the forum that Massachusetts drivers are insane. For example, driving back through it this afternoon, I was going 40 mph down a 30 mph one-lane off-ramp from the highway, concrete blocks snugly lining both sides of it, and the police car that had been tailgating me PASSED ME. No, he wasn't racing off somewhere. He didn't have his lights on, and he was only going about 45, but, hey, that one lane was just wide enough for two.

It was great to be back home.

Ok, so "great" is a strong word, but the point of this illustration is to emphasize how confoundedly weird it was driving in Ohio and Kentucky. Like, this one time Leen was pulling out of a gas station and had to take a left turn across multiple lanes of busy traffic and then take a right. In Massachusetts, this would be done by randomly flooring the gas pedal, because there you would have the right-of-way, along with everybody else on the road. But we're from New Hampshire, so we basically figured we were going to die.

It turns out that Leen managed to get to the left-most lane of the left-bound traffic, but then it was too thick for her to change lanes over to the right for the second turn, and we were all frustrated, because darn it all, we're in a strange town, and it's hot, and we're tired, and, wait, what the heck? The guy behind us, in the lane next to us, has stopped and is waving for us to move across.

If there had been a chance, I would have taken his picture and had him autograph it, but it turned out that this would happen consistently. The moment we'd put our blinkers on (in Massachusetts, this means, "We are already swerving into your lane of traffic, so I hope for your sake you are already slamming on your brakes.") every single car on the road -- and I mean EVERY SINGLE CAR WITHIN LIKE TWO MILES -- automatically drifted out of our way and motioned for us to go basically whenever the heck we wanted, because, hey, life is short, and we love our fellow Man.

But let me back up to Connecticut. Connecticut is rapidly becoming my least favorite state ever, never mind that I have family there. The trouble with Connecticut is, it's in the way, and there's nothing you can do about it. If you want to leave New England, one of three things is the case: (1) You are going north to Canada. (2) You are going to upstate New York and taking a toll road. (3) You are going absolutely anywhere else in the entire world, and you are driving through Connecticut at rush hour (5am-10pm daily) with the 12 million other people travelling between New England and anywhere else.

See, most of Connecticut is rural, but the rural parts are only visible by helicopter, because the roads don't go there. There are about four main roads in Connecticut. The rest are traffic light laden bits of paving that connect Walmarts together. The four main roads are each four lanes wide, two in each direction, only three of the four ever open at any given time. These roads are populated by people who learned to drive from a driver's education program that would resemble that of Massachusetts if Connecticut had the money that Massachusetts did. I'm convinced that most of them only live in Connecticut because they've given up trying to get out of it.

Here's how you drive on I-84 in western Connecticut. First, floor it. Then, brake to a dead stop. Then, floor it. Then, brake to a dead stop. Then, floor it. Meanwhile, observe how every other car on the road manages to go faster than you, even though there is no room to do so, no, no room at all, not even counting when people pass you in breakdown lanes or the exit ramps of exits they are not taking. It is a frustrating thing, to drive in Connecticut.

Once you hit New York on I-84, the roads clear up as if by magic. I figure it's from the lifting of a curse or something, because the road doesn't get any wider, just faster. And once you pass the turn for White Plains and New York City, the road empties, and it's clear sailing through pleasant forestlands until you get to Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania has a sticky bit, because it inexplicably only has one good north/south highway, and all it does is connect Philadelphia with nowhere in particular. (In this sense, Pennsylvania is like an inverse New Hampshire, which only has north/south roads.) So getting from I-84 to I-80, which bisects the entire state laterally is a matter of choosing a windy urban linked chain of a bunch of different interstates or the secret passageway of U.S. Route 209, most of which goes through every single stoplight in every small town in all of Pennsylvania, keeping you away from main roads all the while. But the one bit of it that goes between I-84 and I-80 is a straight-shot two lane back road that doesn't really go through any towns, doesn't really hit any stoplights, doesn't really make any winding turns, and is closed to trucks. Moreover, it provides the first good look at scenic views that don't look like New England.

The coolest interstate of all time, though it makes for an uneventful trip, is I-80. As I said, it bisects Pennsylvania across the middle. What's great about I-80 is that it's the closest thing to a road drawn with a ruler in the entire eastern time zone, and -- here's the best bit -- THERE IS NOTHING ON IT. There are no major cities on I-80 in Pennsylvania. There are just enough small towns to provide food, gas, and lodging for travellers, but that's it. It's the biggest road in the state, yet it does not deign to go to places like Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or Allentown. There is no rush hour. There is hardly any traffic, though what little there is is mostly trucks. If you go I-76 east in Ohio, you eventually get to I-80 near the Pennsylvania border, and the signs all say, "I-80 East - New York City" on them. I even saw some that said, "I-80 East - New York." There's not even so much as a "Oh, by the way, it goes through six hours' worth of Pennsylvania." In fact, the first mention of Pennsylvania on Ohio road signs is one that says if you want to go to Sharon, PA, you'd better get OFF I-80 before you reach the border and take this other road.

So it's great for long-distance travelling. But the most remarkable thing about I-80 -- and, in fact, most interstates in Pennsylvania -- is that the asphalt does not come from the natural world. First off, it has a bit of a reddish tint to it that is only visible when the light is just right. It is not uncommon to see the road through the windshield as gray, and the road through the rear-view mirror as rusty red. Or vice versa.

But it's the sound of the road that's what's truly bizarre. Drive on it, and it sounds like a 747 is flying ten feet above the car, and it is LOUD. The instinctual reaction is to think, "Um, something wacky is going on with my tires, and maybe I'd better slow down before they blow up." So you slow down, and then it sounds like the 747 is LANDING ON YOU.

When Pennsylvania roads aren't airplane asphalt, they are concrete, which is great when weather has accentuated the seams. Ka-gung...ka-gung...ka-gung...ka-gung. It would be cool if the speed limits were posted in seconds per ka-gung instead of miles per hour. "CAUTION: MINIMUM ONE SECOND PER KA-GUNG."

But in all seriousness, I love the signs on I-80. You get on from 209, and there are upwards of two dozen huge, fluorescent signs, all saying things like, "CAUTION: DO NOT TAILGATE!!!" complete with italics and boldface. They even paint huge blotches on the highway to indicate the minimum distance you should put between you and the car ahead of you. Then a mile or two later, in case you've forgotten by then, there are still signs shouting, "MAINTAIN SAFE FOLLOWING DISTANCE BETWEEN VEHICLES!!!!!!" and I'm loving this, because I think tailgating should be made a capital offense, but all I'm thinking is, "Whoa, these east Pennsylvanians must totally hate being so close to southern New England."

Once you cross into Ohio, the character of the land changes. You start seeing more fields and fewer hills. It's nice country out there, despite the lack of mountains. The traffic thickens up between the border and Akron, but after that it's empty again until Columbus, which, like many cities, has an interstate going all around it in case you want to bypass the city innards. But this one changes its official direction as you go around, so you could easily get on I-270 west, then, a few miles down, discover that you are actually on I-270 south, and, still later, I-270 east. On the way down, we figured we'd go through the city, though, and see the sights. So we did. I like skyscrapers. I just wouldn't want to live around them.

Western Ohio looks like a giant pool table. It is green and flat as a pancake. You can see for forever in western Ohio, which explains why famous, when she last visited us, said she got claustrophic when she opted for the scenic route and found herself on forested back roads in Vermont. The closeness of one's field of vision is nothing to us, but it sure contrasts with Ohio.

The hilarious thing about it is that even though there are flat fields all around, and you can see for miles in all directions, the big pole signs for fast food places are still a thousand feet tall. In New England, McDonald's signs are tall so you can see them over the trees. In Ohio, they are gratuitously tall. They look like the toothpicks sticking out of the giant sandwich of America.

Then comes Cincinnati, which is smaller than Columbus, but you wouldn't know it by looking, because Cincinnati is pretty much a vertical city. There are far more skyscrapers and traffic in Cincinnati. I'm told it's horrible during rush hour, but when we went through it (several times over the course of the weekend) it was fine. It helped, of course, that by this time we were discovering that the other drivers on the road were not kamikaze death lords.

As if on cue, the landscape started getting bumpy again the instant we crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. Not mountainous, but there's this one bit just over the bridge that, if you swapped the green for brown, the humidity for smog, the nice drivers for lunatics, the softwoods for palm trees, the gables for adobe, and the rectangular door frames for rounded archways, it could easily have passed for southern California. What I'm trying to say is, I saw this one hill with three houses at the top, and it reminded me about how the silhouettes of the hills in San Diego were all defined by houses instead of trees. Although there were still a lot of trees in Kentucky. And the houses were different. And then we went around a corner, and there weren't any more hills like that anyway.

We stopped in Erlanger on the way down, but later in the week we'd continue on to Lexington, and if Ohio looked lovably different to me, Kentucky was more so. Northern Kentucky is apparently nothing but rolling pasturelands and white fencing. It's so open and happy, that stupid little smiley face sun on their license plates almost doesn't look wrong.

Pennsylvania could take a cue from Kentucky. Their interstates actually connect cities together. It's pretty neat. Like, ok, so, I-71 connects Cincinnati to Louisville. And I-75 connects Cincinnati to Lexington. And I-64 connects Lexington to Louisville. It's like someone planned it that way!

I've discussed what the people of Ohio and Kentucky are like on the road. This is also what they are like off the road. Despite their reputation, New Englanders are not unfriendly, but there is no comparison with Southern congeniality. For example, this is what it was like bringing almost a full complement of Rinkies to the Cracker Barrel in Erlander, Kentucky.

Me: "Hi. I actually have a group of 14 here. Is that going to be possible? I can split it up 7-7 or whatever, if that's more convenient."

Me, Imagining the Response: *sigh of doubt, man it's been too long a day for these people to come in without calling ahead, grumble mutter* "Yeah, we can figure something out, but it'll take three hours."

The Actual Response: "OK! This is so exciting! My name is Alicia, and I would like to personally thank you for choosing to eat here. We are so honored, I will take out a mortgage on my home and give you a thank you gift of ten thousand dollars."

Ok, so that's an exaggeration, but it was close. And when four more people arrived, and I had to tell them I had 18, not 14, right immediately after they were ready with the tables for 14, hey, 18 is four cooler than 14.

I became pretty familiar with the desk staff at the Comfort Inn during that weekend, and not a one of them could have been more proactive about helping me whenever I had a need of some kind. It turns out, "I have that information right now, but I can find out and get back to you," actually means more or less just that, not, "Buzz off, loser, so I can forget you ever disgraced my presence with your unsavory self and your petty little needs." I am not kidding: one time a woman at the front desk actually saw me walking past and volunteered information to me that I had forgotten I had asked for sooner. Just the fact that she remembered who I was was impressive to me, never mind that she remembered what I wanted and got it for me.

Anyway, during the week, we tried a few different food chains unheard of in New England, and I describe them to you now.

Bob Evans. There is a Bob Evans every fifty feet on the highways in Ohio. Bob Evans restaurants are more common there than McDonald's and fruit flies put together. It's a breakfast place, famous told us later, sort of a more upscale Denny's. We ate there with famous later in the week, and it was indeed very good, although it was hard to tell, because at the table next to us was a kid that was screaming at the top of her lungs the entire time we were there, and all we wanted to do was eat fast and get the heck out of there. That kid was crazy loud, and her parents didn't do anything about it but repeat demands that she eat more of her food. They get points for not giving in to the kid's tantrum and letting her get down from the high chair just to shut her up, but the considerate thing to do would have been to abscond to the bathroom or outside and punish the kid. We continued to have good eating and coincidentally horrible experiences in the dining room.

Steak and Shake. Steak and Shake is the rule. It turns out that this place serves steak and shakes. Their burgers are steakburgers, allegedly made of better quality meat, but in practice scarcely discernible from standard fast food burgers. It was good though, and their french fries are, by the textbook definition of the word, CUTE, because they are small. Yes, the french fries are small, and not only that, the straws are big. This inevitably led to seeing if the fries were small enough to fit into the straws. This inevitably led to a french fry taking a dive (unintentionally, believe it or not) into a cookies-n-cream milkshake. The fry was rescued, thanks to the physical laws that make straws work in the first place. That was Leen, not me. My shake was a banana shake, and it was just about the best shake I've ever had. Steak and Shake shakes are delicious, but they only come in two sizes: large and larger. There's a kid's size, but you have to be a kid to get it, and apparently being a kid at heart doesn't count. We went to Steak and Shake a total of four times last week, three times to get meals along with the shakes.

A&W. Yeah, apparently A&W has a small fast food chain. Small, because we only ever saw one the whole trip, which was somewhere northeast of Columbus, and small, because the size of the building was miniscule, to the point where we actually thought it was just a drive-through place until we spied actual seating inside. That place was magically enchanted somehow, because it was not possible for what was inside to fit inside the building we saw from the outside. A&W serves burgers and fries, like every other American fast food place, but is famous for its root beer floats, served in a frosted glass mug. We were disappointed when we learned we couldn't keep it.

This brings me to the single nastiest fast food place I have ever eaten at. It might even be the nastiest food I've ever eaten in my life, period. This place is called White Castle.

In retrospect, it should have tipped us off when famous called White Castle burgers "sliders" -- because they slide right through you. But, see, what famous neglected to tell us is that they apparently slide out the way they go in. White Castle burgers are mini-burgers. You can get a cheeseburger for like 59 cents. The meal deals are things like "four burgers, fries, and a drink." They even sell a "bag" of ten burgers for five bucks. So Leen and I went in, and we figured we'd try all the main variations, so we got two cheeseburgers, a double cheeseburger, two bacon cheeseburgers, and, oh yeah, a side of cheese fries. To go.

When we got in the car, the smell just about kill us right then. The smell of fried onions was so thick, we had to roll down the windows and blast the air conditioner fan. Granted, neither Leen nor I like onions, but I figure even a burger with onions ought to have some burger in it.

I got to work scraping the onions off the burgers with a french fry. Pretty much all the cheese came off in the process, and what was left still tasted like an onion with a greasy texture. But even skipping the onion part, these "burgers" were still no thicker than cardboard and slimy as seaweed. It's not like I'm picky about cheeseburgers. I eat at McDonald's and Wendy's semi-regularly, after all. But by no stretch of the imagination could this be considered fit for human consumption.

I consumed a burger more or less in defiance but could eat no more. Leen took one bite, handed it back to me, and guzzled Mountain Dew. Four entire burgers and most of a fifth were thrown unceremoniously in the trash. As a rule, I do not throw away food, and I did not break this rule then.

The fries were pretty good, though.

So, you're probably wondering about that other kind of asphalt, right? It was what the parking lot of the Marriott on the north side of Lexington was paved with. (Yes, the Marriott; alas, K was not there.) This particular type of asphalt causes tires to squeal on the turns, no matter how slow you are going. The first time this happened, Leen was driving so slowly around a corner that the speedometer needle was essentially pointing at zero, but the squealing sounded EXACTLY like it would have if she had taken a sharp turn at 80 on a normal road, and this time, dear readers, I am not making use of hyperbole for the sake of humor. It really sounded that loud and that crazy. I thought it was our tires, worn down to nothing, but she took one turn after another in the parking lot, looking for a space, each time slower than the last, and each turn accompanied by more crazy squealing that would have made the Dukes of Hazzard proud. After we parked, I inspected the tires. No, they still have good tread on them. But later I noticed other cars driving through the parking lot, and all of them were squealing on the turns. The hotel had valet parking. I can only imagine what it must be like for an arriving guest to hear the valet peeling out behind him as he ascends the steps to the front doors.