Last day of the trip.

Zed and I left Middletown at 5:30 on Friday after he had stuffed a few things into the car. We got mired in multitudes of traffic but arrived in Maryland around noon.

Have you noticed that in nothern Maryland the road signs about motels are rather deceptive? They don't tell you that, yes, there is a motel at this exit, but you have to drive seven miles and make three turns to get there.

I turned back twice, experiencing the feeble road rage of the exhausted.


I finally found one of the worst motels I've ever stayed at, a Motel 8. The door to our room was broken, the knob to the heater was broken off (so we couldn't have any heat), the handle of the bathroom was broken (I almost got locked in there inadvertently), the rug was covered with frightening dark greasy stains, and there were teenagers talking in the parking lot outside our door till past 2.

Zed was so tired he fell on his bed with his clothes and jacket still on.

The next day we saw two odd things when we left our room. The first was this concrete-block enclosure which Zed named "The Filth Corral."


We were perplexed but pleased to see that, hideous and awful as this motel was, it had a farm pond on the premises with lots of ducks and geese. I bet it used to be pretty.


The guard-geese in particular were very protective of the reception area and one of them rushed me just after I took these pictures.


Zed was very pleased with these devil pictures that some Wesleyan wag had put on the back of my car.


I started falling asleep yesterday as I was driving us home so I tried this drink with the amusing name "Full Throttle Fury." It had no effect whatever, but we made it home.


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