Monday, July 24, 2006
Pennsylvania: More Road Signs, More Roller Coasters
So I wake up at the Super 8 motel next to I-80, like the freeway is some cheap hustler I picked up in Danville. A 50-year-old cheap hustler with sagging buttocks, I might add. But I'm a gentleman, so I take him to breakfast, at least until I find the road to salvation, which in this case is US 322, cutting up through Western PA through Franklin and Meadville.
Franklin sits by the Allegheny River, and someday Reggie and I are going to come back here and ride the network of bike trails that travel along the river and to Oil City. I bypass them today, however, and drive into the town, which is one of those middle-American small towns that could be a museum of Victorian architecture. In this case, a museum whose curators don't particularly seem to comprehend the value of their collection, but at least they haven't replaced all of them with Rite-Aids.
There's also a fine courthouse and interesting jail building:
... and a surly clerk at the post office where I mail off Falconworks' IRS 990 form, and a little place downtown that serves a much better cup of coffee than the one the Super 8 gives away.
25 miles up the road is Meadville, which I visited once during high school for a basketball tournament. It's the home of Allegheny College, which I don't see, and Channellock Tools, which I'm rather amazed to see are still made in this country. And it's the home of a Department of Transportation Garage, where I see this. It seems to be a display of wildflowers made out of roadsigns, possibly the ones New Jersey didn't know what to do with. It's either kind of cool or deeply disturbing, in that the Department of Transportation has erected steel wildflowers to commemorate the actual wildflowers that were paved under during the construction of freeways built by the Department of Transportation.
The functional roadsigns tell me I'm near Conneaut Lake, PA, which is the home to Conneaut Lake Park, which merits another stop that will siphon away all the time I made up being hustled by I-80. Conneaut Lake Park is like Knoebels, a classic American amusement park, a summer resort that somehow keeps whirling away without either going under or going on extreme steroids. I rationalize the diversion with the justification that I have to stop for lunch somewhere.
Before lunch, there's a quick spin on the Tumblebug, which is an old-fashioned kind of junior roller coaster and doesn't much exist anymore, riding next to a carful of Mennonite girls. After lunch, a couple of rides on the Blue Streak, a wooden coaster that was built in the '30s and shows it. It still runs the original trains whose only restraint is a weird leather belt that on its tightest notch will prevent exactly nothing from happening to me. The very friendly ride operators hold my camera for the first ride but suggest I might get some good shots if I ride with it, which is why you can see how extremely rickety it is:
... as well as the granddaughter of a man who used to do maintenance on the ride back when it was presumably less rickety:
... and the weird leather belt thing, which was meant to be a photograph of the descent down the first hill.
Then I see a guy by himself on some sort of swinging ride, looking quite a bit like Mr. Bean, and I wonder if I look like that and decide to leave.
Back on the road, the world has flattened out. There's corn. I had a conversation recently with my friends Judy and Lance about where the boundaries of the Midwest are drawn, and why. The conversation was resolved to no one's satisfaction, but along the way "flat" and "corn" were posited as at least necessary, if not sufficient, conditions.
Today I think the applicable definition is "I know it when I see it," and it's very clear the Midwest starts, at this latitude, somewhere in the very western part of Pennsylvania.
Thanks to John for the camera which is providing these excellent photos. Yes, it survived. You can click on the images to take in all the glorious detail. The number of photos per mile is increasing, so I'm trying to figure out a way to link to them without cluttering this page completely. Possibly a sideblog or an EasyShare folder. If you have suggestions, let me know.
Franklin sits by the Allegheny River, and someday Reggie and I are going to come back here and ride the network of bike trails that travel along the river and to Oil City. I bypass them today, however, and drive into the town, which is one of those middle-American small towns that could be a museum of Victorian architecture. In this case, a museum whose curators don't particularly seem to comprehend the value of their collection, but at least they haven't replaced all of them with Rite-Aids.There's also a fine courthouse and interesting jail building:
... and a surly clerk at the post office where I mail off Falconworks' IRS 990 form, and a little place downtown that serves a much better cup of coffee than the one the Super 8 gives away.
25 miles up the road is Meadville, which I visited once during high school for a basketball tournament. It's the home of Allegheny College, which I don't see, and Channellock Tools, which I'm rather amazed to see are still made in this country. And it's the home of a Department of Transportation Garage, where I see this. It seems to be a display of wildflowers made out of roadsigns, possibly the ones New Jersey didn't know what to do with. It's either kind of cool or deeply disturbing, in that the Department of Transportation has erected steel wildflowers to commemorate the actual wildflowers that were paved under during the construction of freeways built by the Department of Transportation.The functional roadsigns tell me I'm near Conneaut Lake, PA, which is the home to Conneaut Lake Park, which merits another stop that will siphon away all the time I made up being hustled by I-80. Conneaut Lake Park is like Knoebels, a classic American amusement park, a summer resort that somehow keeps whirling away without either going under or going on extreme steroids. I rationalize the diversion with the justification that I have to stop for lunch somewhere.
Before lunch, there's a quick spin on the Tumblebug, which is an old-fashioned kind of junior roller coaster and doesn't much exist anymore, riding next to a carful of Mennonite girls. After lunch, a couple of rides on the Blue Streak, a wooden coaster that was built in the '30s and shows it. It still runs the original trains whose only restraint is a weird leather belt that on its tightest notch will prevent exactly nothing from happening to me. The very friendly ride operators hold my camera for the first ride but suggest I might get some good shots if I ride with it, which is why you can see how extremely rickety it is:
... as well as the granddaughter of a man who used to do maintenance on the ride back when it was presumably less rickety:
... and the weird leather belt thing, which was meant to be a photograph of the descent down the first hill.
Then I see a guy by himself on some sort of swinging ride, looking quite a bit like Mr. Bean, and I wonder if I look like that and decide to leave.
Back on the road, the world has flattened out. There's corn. I had a conversation recently with my friends Judy and Lance about where the boundaries of the Midwest are drawn, and why. The conversation was resolved to no one's satisfaction, but along the way "flat" and "corn" were posited as at least necessary, if not sufficient, conditions.Today I think the applicable definition is "I know it when I see it," and it's very clear the Midwest starts, at this latitude, somewhere in the very western part of Pennsylvania.
Thanks to John for the camera which is providing these excellent photos. Yes, it survived. You can click on the images to take in all the glorious detail. The number of photos per mile is increasing, so I'm trying to figure out a way to link to them without cluttering this page completely. Possibly a sideblog or an EasyShare folder. If you have suggestions, let me know.
