A pleasant day trip
Jun 7, 2017 13:25:42 GMT -5
Post by Wes on Jun 7, 2017 13:25:42 GMT -5
Another column picked up from the paper.
A couple of weeks ago I told the story of how my wife and I suddenly and unexpectedly wound up with a new car when her car got sick on us in Cincinnati. A few days later we had to go down and pick her car up after it had been repaired.
Now, my wife likes to have the radio on while driving, while I don't. There is entirely too much talk when I just want to hear the music or use the time to think; talk is at best an interruption. We were just over the state line heading south when the public radio station out of Lansing started to fade, and she started spinning the dial to find another one. "Let me try something," I said, and pushed a previously unpushed button on the dash of the new car, the one marked "XM." Some light pop music came from the speakers. "Great!" I smiled. "The old owners must not have turned off the satellite radio. What would you like to hear?"
"How about oldies?" she suggested, showing that she was also not eager to hear the same prerecorded news commentary over and over again on different stations as we crossed Ohio.
I started spinning the dial, and landed on a channel that was oldies, all right: right out of the forties, with Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, the Andrews Sisters, Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, and other such legends out of our parent's time. That hit the spot!
To avoid the craziness of the big trucks on I-75, we had decided to just go down US-127, which runs within a couple of miles of where her car was waiting. It's mostly an easy drive through pleasant countryside, although slower than battling the heavy traffic on the four-lane. Only the last few miles through the northern outskirts of Cincinnati are a pain in the neck.
There's a big wind farm just north of Van Wert about a third of the way down, and we were driving through it when it struck me how much has changed since Glenn Miller. That includes the wind farm of course, but listening to Moonlight Serenade on satellite radio in an air-conditioned car, being misguided by GPS (which was steadfastly trying to get me over to I-75 on every highway, county road or goat path we crossed.) And the car itself -- really nothing special today, but comfortable, a nice peppy little engine with 2.5 liters, 4 cylinders, 16 valves and 38 MPG showing on the computer screen. Very little of that had even been dreamed of back when Glenn Miller was doing his stuff, or if it had it wasn't available for common use.
Miller died a couple of years before Arthur Clarke came up with the idea of communications satellites, which were well beyond the technological reach of the time. I doubt if Clarke would have ever dreamed of direct satellite to vehicle broadcasts of music or navigation information.
Over the years Kathy and I have enjoyed stopping at country or small-town restaurants on our trips. But sadly, they seem to be disappearing, at least on US-127 in Ohio. There are chain fast food places aplenty, but it's not the same thing and really, a little depressing considering the loss of what they have replaced. However, there was one place that I have stopped at before, although years ago, and it was just as good as ever even if it seemed a little out of its time.
After we picked up Kathy's car and headed back north, I found that I was getting a little tired of forties brass and spun the dial until I came up with some quiet commercial-free easy-listening jazz. Using our cell phones -- something else that would have been incredible in Glenn Miller's time -- we discussed where to stop for dinner and wound up in the same place as on the trip down.
All in all, it was a pleasant day, if a touch on the long side. I like the new car; it's a real improvement over my old one, which is sitting in our front yard with a "For Sale" sign on it. There is a chance the new car could be my last car, and I think it will do just fine no matter how irregularly we wound up buying it.
A couple of weeks ago I told the story of how my wife and I suddenly and unexpectedly wound up with a new car when her car got sick on us in Cincinnati. A few days later we had to go down and pick her car up after it had been repaired.
Now, my wife likes to have the radio on while driving, while I don't. There is entirely too much talk when I just want to hear the music or use the time to think; talk is at best an interruption. We were just over the state line heading south when the public radio station out of Lansing started to fade, and she started spinning the dial to find another one. "Let me try something," I said, and pushed a previously unpushed button on the dash of the new car, the one marked "XM." Some light pop music came from the speakers. "Great!" I smiled. "The old owners must not have turned off the satellite radio. What would you like to hear?"
"How about oldies?" she suggested, showing that she was also not eager to hear the same prerecorded news commentary over and over again on different stations as we crossed Ohio.
I started spinning the dial, and landed on a channel that was oldies, all right: right out of the forties, with Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, the Andrews Sisters, Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, and other such legends out of our parent's time. That hit the spot!
To avoid the craziness of the big trucks on I-75, we had decided to just go down US-127, which runs within a couple of miles of where her car was waiting. It's mostly an easy drive through pleasant countryside, although slower than battling the heavy traffic on the four-lane. Only the last few miles through the northern outskirts of Cincinnati are a pain in the neck.
There's a big wind farm just north of Van Wert about a third of the way down, and we were driving through it when it struck me how much has changed since Glenn Miller. That includes the wind farm of course, but listening to Moonlight Serenade on satellite radio in an air-conditioned car, being misguided by GPS (which was steadfastly trying to get me over to I-75 on every highway, county road or goat path we crossed.) And the car itself -- really nothing special today, but comfortable, a nice peppy little engine with 2.5 liters, 4 cylinders, 16 valves and 38 MPG showing on the computer screen. Very little of that had even been dreamed of back when Glenn Miller was doing his stuff, or if it had it wasn't available for common use.
Miller died a couple of years before Arthur Clarke came up with the idea of communications satellites, which were well beyond the technological reach of the time. I doubt if Clarke would have ever dreamed of direct satellite to vehicle broadcasts of music or navigation information.
Over the years Kathy and I have enjoyed stopping at country or small-town restaurants on our trips. But sadly, they seem to be disappearing, at least on US-127 in Ohio. There are chain fast food places aplenty, but it's not the same thing and really, a little depressing considering the loss of what they have replaced. However, there was one place that I have stopped at before, although years ago, and it was just as good as ever even if it seemed a little out of its time.
After we picked up Kathy's car and headed back north, I found that I was getting a little tired of forties brass and spun the dial until I came up with some quiet commercial-free easy-listening jazz. Using our cell phones -- something else that would have been incredible in Glenn Miller's time -- we discussed where to stop for dinner and wound up in the same place as on the trip down.
All in all, it was a pleasant day, if a touch on the long side. I like the new car; it's a real improvement over my old one, which is sitting in our front yard with a "For Sale" sign on it. There is a chance the new car could be my last car, and I think it will do just fine no matter how irregularly we wound up buying it.
