Tim goes to a roadmeet

Most of this blog is about serious current affairs from my progressive populist perspective, but I have a hobby too. I call it Roads Scholaring - visiting roads just because they're roads. Roads are interesting. Every person, animal, and plant who has ever lived in the history of the universe agrees about that.

Over the weekend, there was a meet-up of Roads Scholars centered on Ashland, Kentucky, and I was looking fiveward to attending it. I almost didn't get to go because of a slight change of plans, but at the last minute, I was able to catch a Greyhound bus that left Cincinnati on Friday night. The only bus route to Ashland was via Columbus of all places, and the trip took all night. The trip wasn't particularly expensive considering the prolonged route, but I got a grand total of about 30 seconds of sleep that night.

At the Columbus bus station, a man passed out on the floor. A pile of powdered cocaine emerged from his pants.

The bus got to Ashland around 5:30 AM on Saturday. And it was below freezing. And I needed sleep. And the indoor Greyhound station was closed. One of the locals told us it didn't open until 8 AM each day. So folks who got off the bus were stuck out in the subfreezing weather. But this netted me 6 hours to freely roam around Ashland in an arthritis-tinged daze until the roadmeet got under way.

About 25 people from several states showed up for the event. We had an itinerary, and we carpooled for a humor-filled tour all over the Huntington, West Virginia, area. We peeped a supposedly haunted tunnel, some bridge construction, a covered bridge, and other items that were of at least some Scholaring interest.

Due to another change of plans, this roadmeet turned into an actual vacation. On Saturday night, a group of us tried visiting as many restaurants as possible. This was unfortunate because I already had an upset stomach caused by curvy roads and lack of sleep. I planned on going home that night, but it got to be so late that we ended up lodging in Grayson, Kentucky. That itself yielded an amusing story: Yesterday morning, when I was in the motel lobby getting ready to leave, an aging man went to the front desk and told the clerk, "I know where this place got their mattresses: J.D. Rockefeller." Get it? 'Cause they were as hard as a rock!

One of the other attendees of the Roads Scholar meet drove me home yesterday.

Since I know you're going to ask, I detected a series of SBD bunker blasts at the Cincinnati bus station on Friday night. I detected the uproarious bouquet of another silent-but-deadly while we were on the steps overlooking that old tunnel during the roadmeet. In addition - since I know you're going to ask about this too - a young woman bubbled at the Columbus bus terminal. But no celebrity look-alikes or helicopter hats were sighted on this trip.

All in all, the roadmeet was a memorable event indeed!