Travel Report

It was, for me, an unusual week. As I mentioned in a previous post, Mrs. Bartleby and I participated in a road rally, photos from which can be seen here. The event was organized jointly by Scenic Road Rallies LLC and the Indiana DNR. There was nothing "racy" about it -- it was a backroads tour of southern Indiana, starting from Brown County State Park, stopping overnight at Spring Mill SP, and ending up at Clifty Falls SP. No time element was involved, and there were many opportunities to stop and look at unusual sights and historical markers, to climb fire towers, to walk across out-of-service covered bridges, and to rustle up odd scavenger-hunt items. So obscure and meandering were the roads selected by the rally designers that I still have only a vague idea of where we went, despite the fact that I drove every mile of it. A good time was had, I think, by all ... certainly by us, anyway. If they do it again next year, I'll certainly consider participating again.

So, we got back to the Fort on Wednesday afternoon, and I quickly grabbed a shower, purged my bag of used clothing, added some clean clothes, and headed to the airport to leave for Boston. At my day job, we're procuring a large collimator (a test optic) that's being built for us by a firm in the Boston area, and it was time for their critical design review. Accordingly, east I went. The review looked quite good. Afterward, some of "those guys" offered to take me along for dinner in Boston's North End. We went to Giacomo's, which I knew right away had to be a fine place, since people were lined up on the sidewalk outside, they don't take reservations, and the lady who waited on us was somewhere between 60 and 70, I'd guess, and quite possibly was the owner. She treated us with what you might call your authentic colorful rudeness. I ended up drinking an entire glass of that-there vino ... a bottle thereof simply showed up at the table, a glass was poured for me, and I didn't want to be a complete Hoosier by asking if I couldn't get some Diet Mountain Dew instead, so I tried to look semi-sophisticated and worked my way through it. Don't think I'll ever develop into a wine connoisseur; it was pretty much grape-ish vinegar, as far as I could tell. The food (calamari, mussels, and scallops on a massive bed of linguini with the pesto sauce) was good, anyway.

So, all in all, it was an unusual week. Good times, for the most part. Still, I'm ready for a return to my usual rut: the oft-unappreciated "dull routine."