A big shout our to Kelly at the desk of he Super Eight in Sandusky, OH, the gateway to the Lake Erie Islands and the fabulous Cedar Point Amusement Park. She got me the Government Rate, and a room for the night before the first day of winter.

She is a pert blonde, my age, and I realized that fly-over country in the heartland has real people with real work ethics, and real souls.

It is funny- Congress looks even dumber from here than it does at home.

Or, maybe I should call it “drive-through country.” I managed to not spend a cent in Virginia, Maryland nor Pennslyvania, nor directly communicate with any resident of those states except by the horn on the Dodge.

I was disappointed that Hetrz had not delivered the promised GMC Traverse AWD, but rather “a similar model.” It looks suspiciously like an SUV-minivan crossover, but it rolls and it is not mine. The vehicle has a bunch of features, including satellite radio and more cup-holders than I have been able to count thus far. I am hoping the drugs a took this morning will loosen my neck muscles to the extent that I can look around the passenger compartment. Maybe tomorrow.

God, it was with mixed thanks that I ran the wipers all day, watching the temperature that hovered well above freezing. When I got a chance to look at the Weather Channel, I realized that I am a very lucky man. I have a a stiff neck, but I do not have a stiff neck on ice.

I want to give a special thank-you to Kim in the Italian restaurant in the hotel, who not only saved me from getting back in the enormous white Dodge Journey AWD to find a fast-food dinner. We just let the monster drip rainwater on the mostly empty blacktop in the parking lot.

Kim is a representative of hard working Buckeyes. Holiday or no Holiday, pain or no pain, she works. The Sandusky Rotary was having their monthly meeting in what is normally the breakfast nook. They looked like nice people, too, and when I explained the topical pain that was going to preclude me from sitting alone in the empty restaurant proper, she whipped out a roller-ball applicator for her neck analgesic medication.

I was in such pain that it did  not seem strange in the slightest to accept a strangers drug, and applying it right there at the service counter.

It is raining again this morning, fierce and persistent, but it is still too warm to freeze and I may drive out of it with the big right-hand turn to Up North that will happen in about fifty miles, at Toledo.

I would tell you more, but there is snow behind the rain, and I intend to be in the Little Village by the Bay before THAT happens.

Merry Christmas, ins’hallah!

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com