I left Arcadia around 12:30pm after a meeting about the University’s fiscal picture.  I was happy to be hitting the road.

I drove many hours.  I listened to podcasts.  I listened to the spotify play list Christopher assembled for me.  I listened to radio. I started writing a play in my head about a woman who gets upset with the thrift store worker who will take her clothes but not her hangers.  They have massage chairs now at the rest stops and five or six hours in, I took advantage of one, jiggling my lower back into love.

The world outside didn’t appear to interest me until I got off the turnpike and headed on a different highway through Wheeling WV and into Ohio.  A heavy storm came up blackening the sky.  I saw on a parallel road, an Amish woman in a cart, urging her dappled horse home in the rain.  Meanwhile, I’m in my sleek black SUV dry as dry can be, with hip hop pulsing, and I speed past her.  I spent the first night outside of Cambridge Ohio in that nether region off turnpike exits.  It’s populated by cheap motels and Cracker Barrel, Denny’s, AppleBees.  I had booked a cheap hotel.

It was no frills but clean, and safe, and it had its own run down charm.  The Tiki Bar was dark and deserted on this Tuesday night but the ballroom was hopping—Bingo night for the local TupperWare Ladies.