We had stopped for food in North Carolina somewhere, and filled up with gas at least once. We were about halfway through South Carolina when I heard a rhythmic beating. At first I thought I was riding over a damaged portion of road. Then I felt the steering fail, and I knew at once it was the right front tire. Fortunately, I was in the right lane, and could get off the road without too much trouble. I pulled as far off as I could while still keeping the flat tire on the asphalt.

Now, I am, of course, perfectly capable of changing a tire. But it was pitch black outside—the Milky Way Galaxy was easily visible—and we were on the side of one of the nation’s busiest highways, and since Kaitlyn is a member of whatever the Canadian version of AAA is and offered to call them, we decided to just wait for assistance. South Carolina is so boring that we hadn’t been paying attention to where we were exactly. Fortunately, our phones have GPS, so I could see that we were about halfway between Highway 78 and Highway 61. Kaitlyn gave the information to the operator, and we were told we’d have help within the hour. So, we just stepped off into the brush by the side of the road and waited it out. It wasn’t cold, it wasn’t raining, and we weren’t anywhere otherwise dangerous.

An hour passed and no assistance appeared. Then my phone rang. The service guy was totally wrong about where we were. He didn’t even know we were on the Interstate. I knew the dispatcher told him correctly, because she repeated what we told her verbatim. Then the service called us back: “You’re on 95 south between 61 and 62, right?” No! So I told him again, and he once again told me it would be twenty minutes.

After much longer than twenty minutes he arrived. He started digging around his truck for his jack, and when he found it he put it under the Volkswagen. But he couldn’t get it to go up. I told him that I had a jack, but he kept fooling around with his. He clearly wasn’t going to get it to work, so he starting screwing around with two bottle jacks, but couldn’t get those to work, either. Finally, I reminded him that I had a jack. He used it, and of course it worked. But he jacked up the car before loosening the lug nuts.

When he put the spare tire on, I asked him if he could inflate it, because it had been in the trunk so long and I was sure it had lost some pressure. “Sure”, he said. He had a compressor in the truck. But his compressor didn’t work, so, no, he couldn’t inflate the tire. Once the tire was on, and I walked around to the driver’s side door to get in, he was peeling out. I knew that was a bad sign, because the hazard lights had been on for hours. Of course the car wouldn’t start.

I immediately called the guy, and he said he would come back.

When he got back to us, he tried to pull his truck around, but he got stuck in the mud. I was not at all surprised. Canada, who has a great deal of experience getting out of tough situations in trucks offered to help him out. Once he had us jumped I pleaded with him to wait for us to get underway, and follow us to the next exit.

There, we filled the tire, got some snacks, and were back on our way to Gainesville. Alas, instead of arriving before midnight, we got home closer to 3:30AM.

It was a crummy experience, but Miriam and I were both happy to have Kaitlyn with us. Her personality calms everyone down. Her signature phrase is “no worries”.

Now, as you may recall, earlier this year I built Mrs. Hill a whole new kitchen, and when it was finished I wished she might have some quality cookware to enjoy. So, on a trip to Charlotte over the summer we paid a visit to the Le Creuset store in, of all places, Yemassee, South Carolina. Le Creuset is a French company that makes enameled cast iron cookware. I saw an episode of How It’s Made once where they showed the production of a Le Creuset Dutch oven, and it was amazing. And somehow, in spite of my relative lack of enthusiasm for cuisine, I had actually heard of the brand. I somehow knew that Le Creuset was known for lasting a long time. A lifetime, really. So it didn’t take much to convince me that this was something I wanted Miriam to have. I just didn’t expect to personally get as much use out of it. I now cook almost exclusively with one of the pieces we brought home that day, and it is marvelous. I say all this to make the next part of the story more clear.

Whether it was from our testimonials or not, our close friend Kat expressed a wish for a nice new Dutch oven, especially since one she owned previously, but made by another company, had been recalled by the manufacturer for a potentially dangerous defect. Miriam took a mental note of this, and on the day after Thanksgiving, six days after Kat’s wedding, Mrs. Hill and I found ourselves on our way to the Le Creuset store in Orlando. The problem for us was that everyone else in the country apparently had the same idea. I cannot possibly convey the enormity of the traffic. We moved inches at a time. Pedestrians on the sidewalk appeared to move away from us so quickly that I think I noticed a red shift. When we at last reached the entrance of the shopping mall, we found the police had barricaded the street; no one was getting through. Imagine the busiest football game day in the history of Gainesville, where cars park anywhere they can make room, where pedestrians cross the street where ever they feel like it, and where police tape restricts access to the very places you wish to go. Imagine that, and then imagine much worse. Miriam had to jump out of the car at an intersection and proceed on foot to the store while I tried my best not to get smashed by the insane drivers determined to reach their goal if it killed them. Cars covered the median and shoulder of the road, and people openly defied no parking signs to secure a small bit of real estate. Miriam emerged from the nightmare unscathed, and with a beautiful turquoise blue Dutch oven she was sure Kat would love. I was shaken. “I am never coming here again”, I vowed. I think I even shook my fist.

We proceeded on to Miriam’s parents’ house, and the next day, as we were enjoying an afternoon at Walt Disney World, Miriam received a textual message from Kat, who was on her way home from Richmond, where her wedding had taken place. “I just got a turquoise Le Creuset Dutch oven at a store in North Carolina”, it read. I died a little, but it was actually kind of funny. Miriam is such a good gift giver that she knew exactly what the bride would have purchased herself given the chance. And she did.

So, it’s back to the nightmare for us to exchange a Dutch oven for a skillet. It’s a good thing Kat and Harris are such wonderful people.

That story is still to come.

Day Two

We took the train from White Plains into the City again on Thursday, arriving at Grand Central Terminal at noon.  Being quite hungry, we decided to explore our various dining options in the basement of the station.  There were many.  Mrs. Hill wanted to try the vast array of famous New York foods, from their famous, but inferior style pizza to their namesake cheesecake and strip steaks.  That morning she opted for a bagel.  I decided on sweet treats from Magnolia Bakery.  The display case was full of delicious looking confections, and I was uncharacteristically eager to try everything, but played it safe with a vanilla cupcake with buttercream icing.  The frosting was slightly more buttery than creamy, and there was a noticeable sugar texture, but the cupcakes were delightful nonetheless.

From Grand Central we took the No. 4 subway down to the southern tip of Manhattan, and exited at the edge of Battery Park.  This was a busy, but open and airy place, and the sunny weather made it seem quite pleasant.  It was impossible to miss the ravaged Koenig sculpture that once stood at the World Trade Center.  We made our way to Castle Clinton to purchase tickets for the ferry to Liberty Island.  Alas, no passes were available to climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty.  I suspect that those must go quickly each day.  We waited in line to board the Miss New York, and once on the ferry made our way up to the top deck.  The ride out to Liberty Island was breezy and warm, and everyone on board snapped photos the entire time.  Once docked, we walked around the Statue of Liberty, viewed the Manhattan skyline from across the harbor, and took a few photos ourselves.  Though we could not go inside the statue, I still felt content to enjoy the weather and the scenery.

We caught another ferry which took us to Ellis Island, a short distance to the north.  Exiting the boat there we walked into a large old building, where, inside the lobby was an enormous pile of suitcases.  Up a flight of stairs we entered the Registry Room, which once looked like this, but today looks like this.  An extensive museum details the experiences of the many thousands of immigrants whose first American experiences took place at Ellis Island.  These people arrived with very little.  Some of what they did have was on display, too.  The clothing–particularly the costumes from eastern Europe–was beautiful.  Overall, the museum appears designed to give you the feeling that you, too, are an immigrant arriving in America.  Of course, not everyone who came to the United States hoping to make a new life came from Europe.  Many thousands of other arrived on the west coast, or elsewhere.  But Ellis Island is a remarkable time capsule of an era in which America was, to the rest of the world, a land of opportunity where the streets were paved with gold.

The Manhattan skyline grew larger as we made our way back to Battery Park, and it occurred to me that almost nothing visible along New York Harbor today would have been around when those waves of immigrants reached Ellis Island a century ago.  New York City, perhaps more than any other large city that never saw the devastation of war, has remade itself again and again.  Draw a circle around almost any single block on a map of Manhattan and you would likely find that that block has changed appearance over and over in the course of the last hundred years.  What today is a skyscraper of glass and steel was before a more modest skyscraper of steel and stone; before that, a block of shops with apartments above; before that, a row of brick or wood houses; before that, who knows?  I thought of this more and more the next day when I stood atop the Empire State Building.

Making our way back to Midtown that afternoon, we headed to Central Park where we watched an open-air rock show.  Pavement, one of Miriam’s favorite bands had reunited for a very short time.  We stood as close as could be, on the rail directly before the stage.  I don’t know much about the band, but they seemed in good form, and everyone played Fender guitars.  Their opening act was a band called Endless Boogie.  Their name was appropriate, because their songs seemed to go on forever.  The first song consisted of only one chord (an A7), played for over twenty minutes straight.  The bass player never played a note other than A.  Their guitarists took turns jamming, with remarkably pedestrian results.  If you know anybody who plays guitar even just a little, no matter how new they are to the instrument, they could play solos as interesting as the guys from Endless Boogie.  It was unbelievably boring.  The only excitement in the entire set–which consisted of two songs totaling almost an hour of playing time–came when the singer received what appeared to be a text message or voice mail.  He reached in his pocket, took out his cell phone, then proceeded to respond to the text message.  I would like to think it was somebody in the crowd writing, “Dude, yr show blows!:-(”

After the show concluded I had to replace a contact lens that fell out during Pavement’s performance.  I had forgotten my glasses at home, and I didn’t have any replacement contacts with me, so when it fell out, I had to save it in my mouth.  I know that sounds horrible, but there isn’t much else one can do under the circumstances.  Central Park isn’t the best place to deal with that sort of problem.  But Miriam had a small mirror with her, and I got my hands clean enough with some sanitizer, and using only saliva I got that contact lens back in my eye.   Leaving Central Park we saw scores of hipsters inhaling helium from balloons being passed out by some dude who told me not to take any pictures.  New York City is much tamer than it once was.

The last time I visited Manhattan was 1989, and though I was old enough to appreciate that I was looking at Rockefeller Center or Radio City Music Hall or Central Park or the World Trade Center, I was not old enough to control my itinerary.  So, I didn’t get to see some of the things I would have liked to, like the view from the top of the Empire State Building, or the incomparable paintings inside the Museum of Modern Art.  This trip, however, was all about doing the important New York City stuff, and it could hardly have gone better.

Day One

We left from Orlando on a Wednesday morning and touched down at the Westchester County Airport before noon.  That made the most sense, since we would be staying in White Plains during our visit.  The flight was half-empty, and though another passenger was initially seated next to Miriam and me, the stewardess offered him his own row, and Miriam and I enjoyed the extra room.  I love looking out the window of the airplane, and Miriam always lets me have the window seat.  On this trip I recognized Jacksonville, Savannah, Chesapeake Bay, and the coast of New Jersey, before discerning Coney Island, and Manhattan off in the distance.  The suburbs of Connecticut looked pleasant and friendly as the plane shifted to a more south-westerly course for landing.

We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel, the Crowne Plaza.  Our eighth-floor room was handsome, with a large corner window that overlooked the intersection of Maple Avenue and Hale Avenue, and the charming homes on a hillside to the southeast.  The hotel offered complimentary shuttle service anywhere in the city of White Plains, and during our stay we took advantage of that luxury.  Though the distance to the train station was not considerable, the path is circuitous, so a free ride was the way to go.

The train station in White Plains is on a platform just west of downtown.  I was not well-versed in the particulars of the New York City Metro, or the Metro North Railroad, and we wanted tickets for both.  The clerk advised us that our best bet was a ten-trip off-peak pass, with accompanying subway pass.  The total was around $60 per ticket.  Off-peak hours are after ten o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon, and then after six- or seven o’clock at night.  The price for a ticket that included peak hours was substantially higher.

While we were waiting for the next train to Grand Central Terminal, a woman in a long khaki coat repeatedly cut to the front of the ticket line to ask the clerk questions about the next train.  I thought her actions were incredibly rude, but she looked very rough and flustered, and assumed she was having a bad day.  When we took our seats on the train I had already forgotten her, but then we heard a woman in a thick Long Island accent pestering a handsome English couple with rather personal questions: “Where do you work?  How much money does that pay?  How expensive is your house?”  And so on.  I thought it was unbelievably impolite, and I half expected the Britons to tell the lady to shove off.   But, like good Englishmen, they took it in stride, and humoured the lady for the entire forty minute ride to Grand Central.

Grand Central Terminal is amazing.  First, it’s enormous.  The ceiling is painted with a huge zodiac, beneath which is the circular information desk, topped with a four-faced clock.  Hundreds of commuters are walking this way and that, and hundreds more tourists are taking photos at any given second.  At the north and south ends of the main lobby are two balconies, under which, through arches, corridors lead to an astonishing array of shops and restaurants, plus the various subway lines that connect to Grand Central.

On our various travels, we have become proficient users of public transportation.  Perhaps the biggest challenge for us when it comes to riding an unfamiliar subway in a new town is learning which lines run which directions.  Once you descend the stairs in a Metro station, all sense of direction one has while above ground is lost.  Thankfully, New York City streets are numbered, and Manhattan is long and straight, with lines running, by and large, north and south.  Just look for the signs that indicate whether the train is heading downtown or uptown and you’re good to go.  The only other challenge (and this one is unavoidable), is determining whether it’s better to exit the subway at one stop or another when it appears that your intended destination lies halfway between.  But we managed during our trip, and we went all over New York City.

Our first destination on our first day was the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We walked the few short blocks to the steps along Fifth Avenue facing elegant mansions, and ate hot dogs in the sunshine before heading inside.

In general, Mrs. Hill and I are thorough museum-goers.  We look at every piece, and read most of the information posted next to each piece, and typically spend many hours exploring.  We did not have the time to do that at the Met.  We spent so much time perusing the Egyptian wing of the museum that we had to skip the Greek art and the medieval art, as well.  The European paintings were astonishing, of course; the sculpture was, too, and I was even fond of some of the modern art, particularly Untitled by Anish Kapoor, a large concave work composed of hundreds of reflective hexagons.  From a distance of several feet it reflected nothing distinguishable.  But moving closer you could make out your own shape, and at a distance of a few inches it became even more mesmerizing.  There was a fascinating round room with a mural depicting the gardens and palace at Versailles painted along the entire length of the wall.  The room had bizarre acoustical properties.  My favorite area of the museum, though, was the reconstructed Greek Revival facade of the 1822 Branch Bank of the United States which once stood on Wall Street.  Beyond the worn stone threshold was room after room of amazing antique furniture organized by period and style.  Today’s rich live in squalor compared to those of yesteryear.  The stairs from the Chicago Stock Exchange Building made me lament that craftsmanship is dead.  Still, I was most touched by something entirely simple: an embroidery sampler stitched by fourteen-year-old Sally Cornelius depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden, beneath which appeared the words, “This I have done to let you see what my parents did for me”.

From the Met we headed back to Grand Central, then took the express shuttle to Times Square.  The density of the crowd there was astonishing.  Throngs of people walking briskly, or stopping hastily to snap photos of family and friends standing at the center of the Western world.  I found it slighty overwhelming, and could easily imagine how one prone to sensory sensitivity might find Times Square oppressive.

We needed to kill some time before heading to dinner.  We had decided to eat at Sardi’s, located in the heart of the Theater District.  When we arrived we were seated right away.  It is a fancy restaurant where fancy people eat.  It is also amazingly expensive.  Our meal was one of the priciest we’ve ever had.  Alas, mo’ money don’t mean mo’ tasty: the food wasn’t that great.  But we paid for the experience of eating at Sardi’s, and, in that regard, I do not regret it.

It had rained during our dinner, which was surprising, and we dodged lightning on our way back to the subway to catch the return train to White Plains.

The next installment: New York City, Part Two.

Miriam is obsessively thorough in her research of hotels, so we knew in advance that our room in Richmond contained a small refrigerator.  This was good news, since she always has leftovers from dinner, and getting two meals out of one is a good way to save money on the road.  Alas, we awoke to the disappointment of finding our room’s refrigerator not cold at all.  When we went to the desk to complain the clerk explained that they unplug the appliances when guests check out to save energy.  That’s a fine idea, but I wish they’d told us in advance.  Miriam’s breakfast was lost.  Fortunately, the regretful clerk offered us their buffet for free.  I made my own waffle, and placed it atop a mountain of bacon.  And, in spite of the refrigerator blunder, the hotel was quite nice and a good value.  By the end of the day, however, we’d be sleeping in a hotel so opulent that it would make even the fanciest of hotels seem like a Bangladeshi sewage treatment plant.

We were packed into the car and heading back north on I-95 as soon as we finished breakfast.  Our destination was Washington, D.C., but in the mean time I was excited to be traveling through the real heart of the Civil War.  The names of towns, counties, and rivers that we passed along our route stood out to me as landmarks in some great historical atlas.  I vividly recall the roadsigns for battlefields seeming like a chronicle of the War’s progression: Fredericksburg, Gaines’ Mill, Wilderness, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and so on.   I remember looking out the window as we crossed the Rappahannock River.  The highway went from maybe six lanes to at least a dozen as we approached the Beltway encircling the District of Columbia.  In the middle was a lane that can be used for traffic going in either direction, which can be changed depending on the time of day.  We crossed the Potomac and got our first look at Washington.

I have driven a car in Puerto Rico, so almost no amount of traffic or dangerous road conditions can upset me too much anymore.  That said, Washington is a frustrating place to drive, if only because unpredictable road closures render almost any system of navigation, old-fashioned or electronic, useless.  Miriam is fond of using the GPS device on her phone.  In many places that gadget would suffice.  In Washington, however, it will say, “Turn right at Pennsylvania Avenue”, unaware that attempting to turn right at Pennsylvania Avenue would result in a significant Department of Homeland Security incident.  We had a hotel reservation and a car.  But we didn’t want to valet to park our car at the hotel because that would be absurdly expensive.  Finding a reasonably-priced garage near our hotel was challenging.  Meanwhile, Miriam was nervous that the hotel would demand a substantial deposit above and beyond the price of the room, which was already paid.  In Puerto Rico last year, the resort there demanded many hundreds of dollars as a deposit, which significantly depleted our walkin’ around money.  The price of our room in San Juan, however, was a bargain compared to the price of our room in Washington.  If we had to pay a thousand dollars as a deposit in D.C., our time there would be significantly less lavish.  I could not imagine how they would expect guests to front so much money, so I was not nearly as worried as Miriam.  And, thankfully for both of us, no unreasonable deposit was required.

The Willard Hotel is historic.  There is no disputing that fact.  Every important political figure of the past two centuries has either stayed there or visited.  The original building has been replaced by a far more grandiose one, which would look quite at home in Paris, but the new building has a legacy almost as rich.  The lobby is opulent, with the seals of the fifty states painted on the coffered ceiling.  Behind the reception desk are old fashioned slots for room keys.  The Pennsylvania Avenue side of the hotel is one floor lower than the F Street side: to get up to F Street you pass through a long corridor and up some steps, where there is a second small, but still fancy lobby.  Our room, No. 914, was on a high floor facing east.  You can see our room’s window, surrounded by fluted stonework, directly above the very center of this photograph.  When we first got to our room a tuxedo-clad man was exiting, having just left a basket of fruit on a table by the window.  The radio was on, and I took it as a good sign that Schumann’s Konzertstück for For Horns was playing.  The furnishings were elegant, and the bed was comfortable.  The bathroom appeared to be made entirely of marble.

We didn’t stay in the room long.  In fact, we put our bags down and almost immediately took off for the Mall.  On our previous trip to Washington, the National Museum of American History was closed.  We were so disappointed to miss it then, and our return trip was prompted, in large part, by our desire to see the treasures that great museum holds.  We walked briskly down 14th Street and entered the building along Constitution Avenue.  Inside the lobby, long glass display cases hold assorted neat things: fancy jars for leeches, pretty kitty dresses, C-3POs, shirts for Magnum, P.I.s, and so on.  The Smithsonian exhibits are arranged by subject, with a “featured artifact” displayed prominently.  At the transportation exhibit, for example, a historic locomotive sits on rails.  In that area they had an old car from the Chicago L, a D.C. streetcar, old automobiles, a ship’s engine, and several locomotives, including one spectacular early-twentieth century engine with wheels as tall as me.  The first ladies’ gowns were extremely popular, and people pressed their faces against the glass to get a look.  Everyone who passed it stopped and stared at Mrs. Obama’s dress.  Another star attraction at the Smithsonian is Julia Child’s kitchen.  We spent so much time looking at every little thing that the museum closed and we had to leave.  We weren’t willing to rush it and miss things, so we decided we’d come back the next day.

We still had hours of daylight, and I thought we might check out the view from the tower at the Old Post Office, but, alas, it was closed.  So we took a leisurely walk back to the hotel to get ready for our night out.  We were looking sharp.

I had made us reservations at the Old Ebbitt Grill on 15th Street, just a half block from our hotel.  It’s an old place, and remarkably popular.  The bar is legendary.  It had a great atmosphere, and, to my great relief, Mrs. Hill was very pleased with the menu.  She loved her meal; I loved mine.  The service was impeccable.  The prices were not obscene.  Sure, it was more than we usually spend on a meal, but it was special.  They had a painting hanging on the wall there that I loved, and were it not larger than me, I’d have been tempted to snatch it off the wall and abscond with it.   All together, the dinner was an experience we won’t forget.

Though it was after ten o’clock, we weren’t ready to turn in just yet, so we took the short walk around the White House grounds.  The skies were cloudy, but the temperature was comfortable, and the walk back to our hotel was pleasant.  The lobby was quiet at that hour, and we took the time to explore more of the hotel before heading up to our room.  Once there, we found little chocolates on our bed, and the covers had been turned down.

The last weekend of May this year marked our fifth wedding anniversary, and with no scholastic obligations weighing me down, and with the car in good working order, we set out on a long road trip that would take us across much of the southeast United States, with the nation’s capital as our main attraction, and many other places of interest along the way.

Day One

We pulled out of the driveway before dawn on Thursday, May 27.  After stopping for some last-minute items, we got underway in earnest, and were making our way north out of Gainesville when the sun was coming up.  Perhaps because I have driven the route so many times, and perhaps because of the unremitting bleakness of the towns along the way (Waldo, Starke, Lawtey), Highway 301 south of Interstate 10 struck me as about the least visually rewarding stretch of road on our entire trip.  Only Interstate 95 through South Carolina rivaled it for sheer blight.

We had already reached Georgia by 7:30AM.  In fact, I missed getting a free map at the state welcome center because it was not yet open.  We crossed the Savannah River and were in South Carolina barely an hour later.  We drove on for another hour and twenty minutes before stopping for breakfast.  Interstate 95 spans an enormous distance across South Carolina, and the drive through that state seems to go on forever, with almost nothing beautiful to look at.  Miriam drove that leg of the trip, and we got to North Carolina around 12:30PM.  That time I got my free map.  I had never been further north on I-95 than the junction at I-40, but, truth be told, there isn’t much to look at:  the fake lighthouse in Kenly houses a Wendy’s.  We were in Virginia just before three o’clock, and as we speeded toward our destination, I became excited by the highway signs: we had traveled a long way!

Richmond was our destination that first day.  We arrived at our hotel around 4:30PM, checked in, and almost immediately headed back out.  We had to choose between two activities in the city that night: enjoying food and entertainment at the botanical garden, or visiting the Edgar Allen Poe Museum.  I am glad we chose the latter, because the Poe Museum in Richmond is a little gem.  Housed in the city’s oldest building (sadly, none of Poe’s former residences in Richmond still stand), the museum holds a surprising number of authentic items, including objects once owned by the writer, as well as autograph manuscripts, and extremely rare editions of his works.  Spread among a few modest old brick buildings, the museum even houses the staircase from Poe’s childhood home, fully reassembled.  Stepping outside into a lovely courtyard, we sat and listened to a singer while enjoying a snack.  The weather was perfect, though Richmonders repeatedly apologized to us for what they considered uncommonly hot temperatures.  Miriam bought a souvenir in the gift shop, and we said goodbye to the friendly staff, having experienced a splendid little place that cost nothing that night.  Plus, we parked directly in front of the front door!

A large model of nineteenth century Richmond at the Poe Museum drew my attention to the great state house that lies in the middle of that city.  It wasn’t far away, at all, and when we arrived we found it was unbelievably easy to park our car.  We climbed the steps at the southwest corner of the capitol grounds and found the place completely deserted.  It was still quite light outside, but nobody was around, so we decided to go exploring.  We walked right up to the great columns on the south portico of the building, and peeked in the enormous windows.  I don’t recall trying to open the door, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if we could have just strolled right in.  The view of the city from that high place was delightful.  We walked around to the east side of the grounds and found the old governor’s mansion.  Several presidents of the United States have lived there.  It sits so close to the state house that I envied the office holder’s one-minute commute.  The mansion itself is handsome but not ostentatious.  It has a low wall in front that one could easily jump over.  Looking to the west across the north face of the capitol we saw the tall statue of Washington upon a horse.  It was beginning to get dark, but we continued to explore the grounds.  Great trees hovered over statues of famous Virginians; attractive benches surrounded lovely fountains; and gorgeous roses mocked me.

We wrung the last bit of daylight from the sky before leaving that place.  We went looking for a place to eat, but driving up and down the city streets yielded few obvious choices.  We were just looking in the wrong place.  According to our friends and Richmond natives, Kat and Harris, the area around the capitol clears out at night, while the nightlife moves to the west end.  There, along a very busy Main Street, we found the Star-lite.  It was intimate enough, though I was somewhat sad when they switched the television above the bar from the Nationals game to basketball.  I apparently had a milkshake for dinner.  On the way back to our hotel we drove down long avenues of elegant nineteenth century homes.  The entire city, it seems, was rebuilt in the 1870s, a hundred years before I was born.

I had learned about motorized bicycles when I stumbled upon an eBay auction for an engine kit.  Since I go to school or work–and usually both–every day, and sometimes make multiple trips, the prospect of shaving several minutes off my commute was appealing.  Moreover, the cold winter mornings and blazing hot summer afternoons are unpleasant on a regular bicycle.  But I rationalized that they would be more tolerable on a motorized bicycle, since I’d move quickly, and, thus, spend less time in the winter cold, and expend little energy, and, thus, get less sweaty in the summer heat.  I bought one of those motor kits on eBay and made my machine using a bicycle given to me by Sarah Jean Russell.  When I began riding my Green Monster, I learned that, indeed, riding fast in the cold beat riding slowly in the cold, and I appreciated that my commute took half the usual time.  But I didn’t get a chance to learn about beating the summer heat:  I only rode my motorized bicycle until mid-April, when concerns for my safety, and annoyance at the myriad problems associated with motorized bicycles ultimately exceeded my passion for speed.

That all came back to me this afternoon when I finally met the owner of the custom motorized bicycle outside Larry’s Giant Subs.  He was an older fellow, and in incredibly profane language he told me how much he loved his bike, but how much trouble he got into with the police, who don’t seem to agree on whether motorized bicycles are motorcycles that require special licenses and registration, or bicycles that don’t.  And he alluded to the fact that his wife took out an insurance policy on him.  I can do without all that.

Each morning, we walk across the street in front of our hotel to the lot where our rented Nissan waits for us.  Parking isn’t a problem.  It’s expensive, but spaces are ample.  Depending on where we’re going, we turn either right or left.  Left takes us into Old San Juan, or the highways that lead to the western and southern portions of the island.  Cities like Arecibo and Aguadilla are reached via PR-2, which roughly follows the contours of the Atlantic coast.  Ponce, near the Caribbean coast, requires a journey south, via PR-52.  To reach the eastern portion of the island, we turn right out of the parking lot, travel down some two-lane roads past public beaches and vendors selling all manner of Puerto Rican cuisine, and connect to PR-3, which leads to Fajardo.

Some of these highways are limited-access freeways like the Interstate system.  Elsewhere, they are more like standard American highways, with at least two lanes in each direction, but intersections and direct access from shopping centers and local streets.  Some have tolls, though they are spread far apart, and are inexpensive.  The highest I encountered was $1.50, and most were half that.

Depending on where you’re going, however, these highways may get you only half way there.  The center of the island is rural, rugged and mountainous.  Though the peaks don’t generally exceed a few thousand feet, they do so from sea level and are quite steep.  The two-lane roads that connect the small towns in the interior are unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the USA.  First and foremost, almost none have lane markers.  (That goes for many of the main highways, too, where the first few hundred yards on either side of an intersection have no lines of any kind.)  This means that drivers move freely across the surface of the road.  On a four-lane highway, it’s bad enough to constantly fear that the driver in the lane next to you will try to move over.  On narrow roads high in the mountains, a car in your lane as you round a corner may mean certain death.  Meanwhile, these rural two-lane roads in the mountains are narrower than an average American driveway.  Imagine the door of your two-car garage.  Now, imagine coming around a blind corner fifteen hundred feet above the forest floor, finding a car in what should be your lane–if there was one–and having to pass in the space of that open garage door.  Imagine doing that at speed, where a false move will send you down into a ravine.  That happens a dozen times every kilometer in Puerto Rico.  (Curiously, distances are measured in kilometers, but speed limits in miles per hour.)

Meanwhile, the narrow, lane-less roads are invariably in terrible condition.  Huge potholes dot every street, rural or urban.  In cities, drivers must avoid these, while simultaneously dodging deep-set manhole covers placed in a seemingly random fashion, and wide metal grates which aid in drainage.  One such grate awaits those who exit PR-26 at Isla Verde.  If you know it’s there you can try and slow down, because hitting it at forty-five miles per hour would be devastating to tires.

Making things worse, Puerto Rican drivers do not use turn signals.  Ever.  You never know what anyone is going to do until they do it.  And they practice something Miriam refers to as “nudging”, in which, when leaving a shopping center or trying to change lanes at an intersection, they just push the noses of their cars into traffic, forcing others to either let them in, or crash into them.  Nudging may be so necessary and frequent because the names of streets are seldom indicated with visible signage.  If you’re lucky, you’ll see some faded tiles on the side of a corner building.  But you will frequently go for blocks in a city without seeing anything indicating where in the world you are.  It’s indescribably aggravating.

Add to all of this an innate Puerto Rican recklessness, and you have the recipe for disaster.  And yet, after seven days and almost nine hundred miles of driving, I saw only one accident – on my very last day.  I’ve never made the hour and a half drive from Gainesville to Orlando without passing at least one accident.  This afternoon, after watching a bicyclist charge blindly into traffic on a busy Ponce street, I came to a conclusion: God loves Puerto Ricans and protects them from automotive disaster.  The combination of bad roads and bad driving here made me expect to see corpses piled high beside shredded wreckage, but, no.  Some divine hand is keeping them safe.  May it be ever thus.