What I Experienced on the Road Home Today

I left Becket, Massachusetts, at 5:30 this a.m., arrived home in Hudson, Ohio (566 miles), just about 3:00.  Pretty good time for that long, long trip.  (I take the cheap way--I-80--not the quicker way--I-90).  And along the way ... some sights, sites, ruminations ...

• Both brothers, older and younger, crawled out of bed to wish me well on my journey home.
• Full dark, no stars (to quote a recent Stephen King title) while coming down Becket Mountain Road, my timorous eyes seeing deer everywhere, leaping in front of me (none did).
• Lovely Taconic Parkway, where I experienced the sunrise.  Joyce used to have some relatives who lived in Stanfordville, NY, in a grand old farmhouse.  Uncle Gene was a country lawyer; Aunt Kathy, an authority on wedding protocols (she ran a bridal shop in NYC for years).  Both smoked like coal-fired power plants.  Neither had a driver's license.  We felt for them both a depthless love.  Theirs was the Bull's Head Road exit on the Taconic.  I cannot drive by it without you-know-what happening to my eyes.  When I am alone on the road, as I was today, I always call Joyce at the Bull's Head exit.  That way I know my damp eyes will have two companions back in Ohio.
• Tongues of morning sunlight on the slopes of the Catskills.
• Many dead deer--some very recently--all with looks on astonishment on their faces.
• Quite a few Dumb Guys; no Smart Cars.
• Some frustrated carrion crows trying to dine on a possum-too-slow in the high-speed lane.
• A McDonald's employee, probably smiling while doing so, who gave me a cup of room-temp coffee, a condition I did not discover until I was back on I-80 near Clarion, PA.  I said some very bad words.
• The prisons on I-84, just east of the Hudson River, near Beacon, New York.  Not a good place to pick up a hitchhiker.
• The rest area at Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania, a rest area that features--at both areas, eastbound and westbound--wood carvings of bears.
• Attentive hawks in high trees.
• Always wondering if my E-Z Pass unit is functioning (why isn't that light turning green?).
• A creepy guy who entered that dark Taconic at the same time I did; he stayed in the left lane, about 100 feet behind me, for many miles.  I wanted a roof-mounted rocket-launcher.
• Another creepy guy who drove parallel to me on I-80 in Pennsylvania for many miles.  A dark, dirt-caked pick-up with dark windows.  I wanted a roof-mounted rocket-launcher.
• A semi pulling a trailer of new cars; he pulled out in front of me as I was heading for the on-ramp from a rest-area, getting ahead of me.  I wanted a roof-mounted launcher.
• My driveway in Hudson--a woman I love, a wide smile on her face, coming to the door ...  Opening it.