Running

I'm terribly frustrated right now because I don't have time to respond to anyone's comments! Please, don't feel left out; I am just on the run right now, and everyone's notes will remain in my box until I can do some serious maintenance.

Actually, I am just too full of anticipation to write much right now. Do you know where I am? New Jersey, baby. Just minutes outside of Red Bank and Leonardo. Which means that in just a few short minutes I will be in movie geek heaven. I have a list of directions to all the Kevin Smith sites; the Quick Stop, Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash, and on and on... I'm getting all sweaty just thinking about it.

Allright, calm down. I've got days of backstory to fill you in on first. Must take deep breaths. Okay.

After looking at multiple maps, my bank account, and my patience, I have realized that I just don't have enough time to do everything. 10 months on the road, and now I have no more time. I have decided I am going to be home by the 4th of July, and I've got miles to go before I sleep. I've had to cut some juicy states. North Carolina, I barely knew 'ya. Texas... oh, Texas. I am going to touch each state, and do at least one strange thing in each one, but that's it. I'm done. Kaput.

I finished New England in record time. The nut museum in Old Lyme seems to be no more, which made speeding through Connecticut easier. Gillette Castle was much fun; I put in my wax fangs from Yummies and posed behind ornately carved wood doors. The man who envisioned it was a famous stage actor; he wrote and starred in "Sherlock Holmes".

The woods in Connecticut are fabulous; I swear I've seen 30 horror films that must have been filmed there, as well as one film about filming a horror film. The rainy days helped; it was beautiful and dark with huge mansions lurking beneath the trees.

Strangely, those woods did not scare me nearly as much as upstate New York. There, for the first time in my life, I got that oogy stomach feeling, the kind that normally is only brought on by extreme terror, just from a smell. It wasn't a particularly bad smell, even. Just a sort of... wet, industrial odor that triggered some sense memory somewhere. Later, driving through cities and towns and villages, I realized that I was getting the same strange feeling that I had in NYC, a knowledge and memory of places I had never been to before. Except this time, instead of memories from movies and books, the memories were from my nightmares. Right there, that's where a scary man chased me and my 2nd grade class up the stairs and out into the woods... there's where I found myself alone in an empty ramshackle mansion... and so on.

I don't mean to insult the area. It's really quite beautiful, and the lock system was fascinating. It's just that somehow, that area is the landscape for my nightmares. Ughh.

So I ran away. Up into the Adirondacks (still a little freaky, but only because of the masses of tourists), and back down towards Pennsylvania and (yay!) Jersey. On the way I stopped at Howe Caverns. It was almost worth it, just to see the Most Boring Tour Guide in the World. Every 50 feet or so he would bring the whole group to a halt, stand and silently count for a while, then say something like, "We call this the White Horse formation, because it resembles a white horse." Wait for admiration, then walk on, only to repeat the procedure in 50 more feet. "This we call the Tower of Piza, because it resembles the famous tower of Piza in Italy." Or my favorite, "We're about to go into the Narrows. This is the best part of the tour." Walk on. The rest of the time, he was completely silent. He was so bad, I think I'm kinda in love with him.

That's enough, I've gotta get going. Dante is calling me.

Comments

[greta]

New Joisey, be kind to Bethany...no more smelly nightmares! I just cracked up that your post is titled running...I figured you'd be holding a sign that said My Sister is Running a Marathon, can you beeeleeeve it? heh, you are running your OWN marathon.
North Carolina hardly got to know YOU, either, but we'll fix that on the next worldwide whirlwind tour of the Herron sisters, okay?
Be safe out there darlin'....it's getting to be the HEAT of Summer Driving Season....
mwah!

[billy]

...just remember not to shake hands with anyone (just in case they've done the stinky hands thing from mallrats) :^)...