Lessons from the Road

Well, dear friends, I have arrived.

After 1000 miles in the car, 14 hours spent talking to myself (or other drivers), more of interstate 95 than I ever hoped to experience, and unthinkably many cups of coffee, I pulled into Boston, Massachusetts. I'm still working on learning how to spell Massachusetts without the aid of spell-check, so please forgive me if the full-drawn-out-version appears multiple times in this post. Regardless. Hi. Welcome to my life. Lessons from the road?

You are more like to get stared at if you wear sunglasses: people somehow think that if they cannot see your eyes, then you cannot see them, ergo it is perfectly a-okay to stare for as long as they like. This principle applies on-road and off.

In Connecticut (yay, spelled it correctly!), littering costs $219 dollars. Not $215, not $220: $219. Please don't ask me why, I'm not quite sure.

A seeing-eye parrot? Really now? I was hanging out in a rest stop on the border of Maryland and Delaware when a lady strolls out of the rest-stop with a full-sized parrot on her shoulder. And by full-sized, I mean at least 2 feet from tail to beak. And bright blue. And alive and talking. Like whoa. And since the rest stop had pretty strict animal policies, as in, limited to aid-animals, I can only deduce that this must have in fact been a seeing-eye parrot. Or perhaps a member of the missing-link family?

Never, ever, ever, and by that I mean never, drive into New York City. Especially not during rush hour. Especially not through the Lincoln Tunnel. Enough said. Three hours, three miles later, I realized my mistake.

The value of the turn signal. When one is driving in the south, often times the turn-signal is an unneeded-extra. There are turn lanes, guarded left-turn lights, and frankly, just not that many cars on the road. Here, however, where drivers multiply by the millions, aggressiveness quadruples, and driving prowess also increases, turn signals become quite dear friends. This, you will note, is also the difference between NYC drivers and Boston drivers: Boston drivers signal, and then cut you off; NYC drivers just cut you off.

But all that aside, the drive was fairly smooth, and I arrived in Boston in one piece!

M-A-S-S-A-C-H-U-S-E-T-T-S.