Rug, the car pet

First, allow me to get this out of the way. Meet the official trip mascot, Rug. The car pet. This little gem was found at the Travel Emporium, I-90, on the way to Chicago. $2.99 and no larger than a cell phone, it petrified its way into our mind/heart. Life-like photo courtesy Miss Katie. Thank you Katie, for documenting this moment. Finding Rug led to a discussion of The Graduate. Allow me to recreate this exchange:

K: I bet the manufacturer would say 'I'm in plastics' rather than admit to making this.
L: Yes, 'the future's in plastics'.

Hence the digression continued in this manner: The Graduate > Dustin Hoffman >Tootsie?! > Midnight Cowboy.

And thus, the story of Rug.


Katie and I leaving the 'Ville, 6 AM, Tuesday. Destination: Cleveland, Chicago:




For the past two days, the road time on I-90 has meant making our own diversions. Topics of interest:

1) Contemplating the phenom that is the Interstate Sign. This one, at the entrace to one of the rest stops makes swift interpretation necessary. You risk causing a pile-up stopping to figure out how lengthy your vehicle is for proper parking. What happened to the word "Car" and the arrow. I got that. This, we had to analyze. Who needs that when all you want is to visit the Travel Emporium inside.

2) The City of Cleveland has a compulsion to over paint asphalt. Take this Burger King parking lot. A simple double solid line would be enough to direct me into the parking lot. Instead, we got 6000 arrows, each about 2 feet of bright yellow. Cleveland also has a compulsion with reading parking meters very, very recently expired and swiftly presenting my car with a ticket. Twice.


City # 1. Cleveland. Sight: Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Hightlights included Bob Dylan exhibit. (Dylan's work from '56 - '66. ) A Franz Ferdinand suit coat worn in one of their videos. The HoF was exactly the right amount of digestable information, and adequeate presentation of rock history. Many Nirvana and flannel references dated the museum media presentations to mid-90s. It was great. The features confirmed my appreciation for The Clash. Turns out, the 80s punk scene rose out of a similar spirit of unrest and reaction to oppression as reggae music, for their respective political enviroments.

- Katie discovered an interesting error in a museum U2 reference to their recent album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. The HoF jukebox named the album How to Detonate an Atomic Bomb. Detonate...Dismantle. Hmmm. Neither connotation nor spelling is similar. And knowing Bono's outlook, "detonate" is a little ominous, no?

HoF is an interesting building, as you can see.

Overall? Cleveland isn't too shabby. In fact, it has character, and a few suprises. And the traffic's not bad.