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Not Much Going On
May. 23rd, 2006 05:51 pmTuesday, May 23, 8:30 p.m.
This morning I remembered that I couldn’t just hang around doing whatever I wanted because the check-out time was 11:00. By then I had slept a lovely nine hours. No waking up at 5:00 today!
Then breakfast reminded me of La Quinta. By which I mean they had a waffle maker and waffle batter. I resisted, though. They also had English muffins, sausages, and scrambled egg patties (and a microwave). So I had raisin bran, a blob of egg, orange juice, and hot chocolate. Not too bad.
I uploaded things, packed, showered, and had to do my planning in the car after checkout.
I decided to check out some of the neighboring sites. I thought I’d go to the Enfield Shaker Museum, then maybe the Montshire Museum (a children’s science museum), and then maybe this shop of a company that makes flour. However, when I got to the Shaker Museum, I learned that it was open only on weekends until next weekend. Dang! I looked back in my guidebook and it even said that right in there! After it said, “at all other times [of the year]...,” I had looked only at the hours, to make sure they were open before noon, not the days. Idiot.
Then I did not have the energy to find any other places for which I had lower expectations, so it was all blow-this-popsicle-stand action again.
**
Don’t you love those road signs that imply you might need to take evasive action, but it’s unlikely that you actually have the required reflexes? There used to be one in Austin that said “Falling Rock.” I decided the sign was really only helpful between the time the rock hit the road and the time it was cleared from the road. While it was actually falling, could you get out of the way, if only you had been warned in time?
Here I’ve seen the ones for “Moose Crossing,” “Deer Crossing,” and “Bear Crossing.” But my favorite one was in Maine: “Low Flying Planes.”
Hey, I actually saw a moose yesterday! It was approaching the road, but I was headed for an exit and already properly slowed down. It walked toward the road, took a look, perhaps thought to itself, “Oh, brother, the cars are still here,” and turned around and walked away.
I could tell it was a moose because it wasn’t a deer. Or a bear. It had no antlers and looked kind of like a large, knobby, furry horse. (Just so you can really understand how cool it was to me that I saw a moose.)
Besides the animal crossing signs, we also get another science lesson: “Bridges freeze before roads.” Just a little piece of science you might find useful, because there is a bridge right in front of you. The government just assumes that its drivers can figure out what that means for them before they slide off the bridge. I love that.
In Texas, we assume people are idiots. We have a sign that folds in half. When it’s folded closed, it says “Drive Friendly,” a good idea if grammatically horrifying. Then when the weather gets freezing and rainy, the signs get flipped open. I forget exactly what they say now, but basically they say that the road is icy. Not that it might be icy. So our state has chosen to cry wolf rather than to attempt to educate us.
**
On the way to Burlington, I toured one of the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factories, as had been recommended by virtually everyone. I was not overly impressed. It had a cute paint job on virtually every wall. It has two workers whose main duty is to unwrap packages of ice cream cups and stack them into the machine. But, like flight attendants, they are also trained to handle emergencies.
The machines have to be cleaned at least once every 72 hours, which takes a full eight-hour shift. Otherwise they are continuously making two flavors 24 hours a day. Their other factory is about twice as big.
It was interesting that before this business, Ben and Jerry were losers in some ways. They met because they were the fattest, slowest guys in their PE class. Then one of them kept switching colleges and never graduated. The other graduated but could never get into med school. They chose ice cream because an ice cream maker was cheaper than a bagel maker. I admire famous people who don’t feel that they have look perfect in every way. (If they were politicians, they would have made up better-sounding versions and then their opponents would have discovered some of these facts and tried to embarrass them with them. Bleh.)
My favorite part of the factory was a little display outside describing about how large dairies have to buy their feed from somewhere else, and then they have to pay to get rid of all the dung they are acquiring. Small dairies can use the dung to fertilize the land they’re using to grow the feed, which makes a lot more sense, so that’s the kind of dairies Ben and Jerry’s uses.
My second favorite part of the place was the flavor cemetery out back. There are brightly painted headstones for some of the discontinued flavors.
Also I got fed Banana on the Rum ice cream. It was yummy.
**
When I got to Burlington, I found a hotel. It’s the cheapest one so far, I believe, at a mere $49 plus tax, a Rodeway Inn. They also have a continental breakfast and an internet connection. I’m right next to a stairwell, so I periodically get to hear a clomp-clomp-clomping sound.
I tried the bakery next door, but I arrived at closing time. I tried exploring more on foot, which seemed like a good idea when I saw sidewalks on both sides of the street. And although there are some crosswalks, there are no pedestrian crossing signs, and the traffic lights are arranged so that pedestrians cannot see them from the end of the block. And there’s a lot of nothing nearby anyway.
So, I drove around some more trying to get the lay of the land. It didn’t really work other than that I learned that I find the layout basically confusing. I found, um, a mall. Where I am happy to say I found a Taco Bell. Which means that Tex Mex has reached New England both in chain sit-down restaurant form (which I’ve seen earlier) and in chain fast-food restaurant form. And which also meant I got a burrito for supper.
I also learned that Dunkin Donuts is more common here than at home. And, at least in the mall, they don’t have just donuts and coffee. They also have smoothies and breakfast sandwiches. Interesting.
Right near me is a Price Chopper, which turns out to be a grocery store. It’s definitely easier to find whole grains around here. And English muffins. They even have whole-grain English muffins. I also saw a section of kosher food, which I’ve never seen in Texas. And there was a little hippie section, too.
I got whole-grain bagels (with 8 g of fiber per bagel). And peanut butter. And cream cheese. And cheese. There’s no refrigerator here, so whatever I don’t finish in time will just get tossed, but I won’t be worried about food anytime soon.
Then I turned on PBS. They wanted to teach me about volcanoes , the sex slave trade, and child miners. These all show me how very lucky I am. I do not live in (nor am I visiting) any place where the land can suddenly spew fire at me or collect so much carbon dioxide that I could walk through it without noticing it and just die. And I am not so poor that I feel that I am going to fall for scams to induct me into the sex slave trade, nor do I think that the only way to save my family is to work in a mine that I know will cut my expected lifespan in half. So many of these people doing idiotic things are doing them for very good reasons.
One interesting question was how to stop the sex slave trade. Everyone agreed on two answers. First, address the poverty in the areas where the victims live. But also address the demand in the countries where they get sent (including the US, by the way). You could say the same about mining. With the volcanoes, you can't really address the demand for lava and gas to escape, but you can still look at finding options for people other than to re-build in known dangerous areas. And they're working on prediction.
This morning I remembered that I couldn’t just hang around doing whatever I wanted because the check-out time was 11:00. By then I had slept a lovely nine hours. No waking up at 5:00 today!
Then breakfast reminded me of La Quinta. By which I mean they had a waffle maker and waffle batter. I resisted, though. They also had English muffins, sausages, and scrambled egg patties (and a microwave). So I had raisin bran, a blob of egg, orange juice, and hot chocolate. Not too bad.
I uploaded things, packed, showered, and had to do my planning in the car after checkout.
I decided to check out some of the neighboring sites. I thought I’d go to the Enfield Shaker Museum, then maybe the Montshire Museum (a children’s science museum), and then maybe this shop of a company that makes flour. However, when I got to the Shaker Museum, I learned that it was open only on weekends until next weekend. Dang! I looked back in my guidebook and it even said that right in there! After it said, “at all other times [of the year]...,” I had looked only at the hours, to make sure they were open before noon, not the days. Idiot.
Then I did not have the energy to find any other places for which I had lower expectations, so it was all blow-this-popsicle-stand action again.
**
Don’t you love those road signs that imply you might need to take evasive action, but it’s unlikely that you actually have the required reflexes? There used to be one in Austin that said “Falling Rock.” I decided the sign was really only helpful between the time the rock hit the road and the time it was cleared from the road. While it was actually falling, could you get out of the way, if only you had been warned in time?
Here I’ve seen the ones for “Moose Crossing,” “Deer Crossing,” and “Bear Crossing.” But my favorite one was in Maine: “Low Flying Planes.”
Hey, I actually saw a moose yesterday! It was approaching the road, but I was headed for an exit and already properly slowed down. It walked toward the road, took a look, perhaps thought to itself, “Oh, brother, the cars are still here,” and turned around and walked away.
I could tell it was a moose because it wasn’t a deer. Or a bear. It had no antlers and looked kind of like a large, knobby, furry horse. (Just so you can really understand how cool it was to me that I saw a moose.)
Besides the animal crossing signs, we also get another science lesson: “Bridges freeze before roads.” Just a little piece of science you might find useful, because there is a bridge right in front of you. The government just assumes that its drivers can figure out what that means for them before they slide off the bridge. I love that.
In Texas, we assume people are idiots. We have a sign that folds in half. When it’s folded closed, it says “Drive Friendly,” a good idea if grammatically horrifying. Then when the weather gets freezing and rainy, the signs get flipped open. I forget exactly what they say now, but basically they say that the road is icy. Not that it might be icy. So our state has chosen to cry wolf rather than to attempt to educate us.
**
On the way to Burlington, I toured one of the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factories, as had been recommended by virtually everyone. I was not overly impressed. It had a cute paint job on virtually every wall. It has two workers whose main duty is to unwrap packages of ice cream cups and stack them into the machine. But, like flight attendants, they are also trained to handle emergencies.
The machines have to be cleaned at least once every 72 hours, which takes a full eight-hour shift. Otherwise they are continuously making two flavors 24 hours a day. Their other factory is about twice as big.
It was interesting that before this business, Ben and Jerry were losers in some ways. They met because they were the fattest, slowest guys in their PE class. Then one of them kept switching colleges and never graduated. The other graduated but could never get into med school. They chose ice cream because an ice cream maker was cheaper than a bagel maker. I admire famous people who don’t feel that they have look perfect in every way. (If they were politicians, they would have made up better-sounding versions and then their opponents would have discovered some of these facts and tried to embarrass them with them. Bleh.)
My favorite part of the factory was a little display outside describing about how large dairies have to buy their feed from somewhere else, and then they have to pay to get rid of all the dung they are acquiring. Small dairies can use the dung to fertilize the land they’re using to grow the feed, which makes a lot more sense, so that’s the kind of dairies Ben and Jerry’s uses.
My second favorite part of the place was the flavor cemetery out back. There are brightly painted headstones for some of the discontinued flavors.
Also I got fed Banana on the Rum ice cream. It was yummy.
**
When I got to Burlington, I found a hotel. It’s the cheapest one so far, I believe, at a mere $49 plus tax, a Rodeway Inn. They also have a continental breakfast and an internet connection. I’m right next to a stairwell, so I periodically get to hear a clomp-clomp-clomping sound.
I tried the bakery next door, but I arrived at closing time. I tried exploring more on foot, which seemed like a good idea when I saw sidewalks on both sides of the street. And although there are some crosswalks, there are no pedestrian crossing signs, and the traffic lights are arranged so that pedestrians cannot see them from the end of the block. And there’s a lot of nothing nearby anyway.
So, I drove around some more trying to get the lay of the land. It didn’t really work other than that I learned that I find the layout basically confusing. I found, um, a mall. Where I am happy to say I found a Taco Bell. Which means that Tex Mex has reached New England both in chain sit-down restaurant form (which I’ve seen earlier) and in chain fast-food restaurant form. And which also meant I got a burrito for supper.
I also learned that Dunkin Donuts is more common here than at home. And, at least in the mall, they don’t have just donuts and coffee. They also have smoothies and breakfast sandwiches. Interesting.
Right near me is a Price Chopper, which turns out to be a grocery store. It’s definitely easier to find whole grains around here. And English muffins. They even have whole-grain English muffins. I also saw a section of kosher food, which I’ve never seen in Texas. And there was a little hippie section, too.
I got whole-grain bagels (with 8 g of fiber per bagel). And peanut butter. And cream cheese. And cheese. There’s no refrigerator here, so whatever I don’t finish in time will just get tossed, but I won’t be worried about food anytime soon.
Then I turned on PBS. They wanted to teach me about volcanoes , the sex slave trade, and child miners. These all show me how very lucky I am. I do not live in (nor am I visiting) any place where the land can suddenly spew fire at me or collect so much carbon dioxide that I could walk through it without noticing it and just die. And I am not so poor that I feel that I am going to fall for scams to induct me into the sex slave trade, nor do I think that the only way to save my family is to work in a mine that I know will cut my expected lifespan in half. So many of these people doing idiotic things are doing them for very good reasons.
One interesting question was how to stop the sex slave trade. Everyone agreed on two answers. First, address the poverty in the areas where the victims live. But also address the demand in the countries where they get sent (including the US, by the way). You could say the same about mining. With the volcanoes, you can't really address the demand for lava and gas to escape, but you can still look at finding options for people other than to re-build in known dangerous areas. And they're working on prediction.