Cincinnati

Driving is my favorite.  I mean that.  I am in love with several things, namely, Simon and Garfunkel, city driving, truck stop coffee, and Laundromats on rainy days.  The Laundromat is where I am now, and whenever I come here it rains (all two times I’ve been this month).  But it’s cozy with the dryers and the detergent smell and the gum ball machines. 

Yesterday I was in Cincinnati, meeting my dear friends Rosanna and Alyssa at a good compromise between Berea and Indianapolis.  It was a beautiful day.  The only blight on it is that I am gravely disappointed that Cincinnati does not have two repeating syllables like I thought it did.  I checked every sign I passed but its true that Cincinnati only has three n’s.  I could swear I read it “Cinncinnati” somewhere.  But that somewhere was Divine Right’s Trip by Gurney Norman, and the fictional main character was the one discussing this. He was also stoned for most of the book. 

Every city I drive in issues a fresh challenge.  Driving the interstate reminds me of algebra II in high school. It builds on itself; once you get a concept it applies elsewhere.  You realize that when you get off an exit to switch directions you might have to drive through a sketchy neighborhood, but you will once more be reunited with the lifeline of green signs.  

You need to drive through a city twice.  Once on your own, maneuvering the loops and spaghetti bowl of interstates, then with an alternate driver, so that you can look at the scenery.  I admired the surprise view coming over the hill into Cincinnati and enjoyed the bridge crossing over from Kentucky.  I hadn’t been in Ohio since I was six, and hadn’t had the chance to feel the difference between the two.  Cincinnati was hillier than I expected.  The skyline wasn’t magnificent, but there was flavor to the city.  The shot gun houses standing like pieces of cake in a row, the bridges over the Ohio River (in various colors; blue, yellow, and lavender).  

I tried to be both a driver and a passenger for a while, but missed the junction to get back on I-75 north.  I knew the second it happened, but once off the google-mapped path, getting back was puzzle. 

Panic does not help anything.  And I had allotted myself 30 extra minutes for this express purpose of missing turns and “recalculating” as the GPS would probably say.  After a couple of GPS experiences, I have decided that if I want to travel the world, I’d better learn to follow, give, and work out my own directions. 

So, in the spirit of not panicking, I talk myself through it.   

Ok, we’re driving over the freaking Ohio River again.  Drive over the bridges.  Drive over all the bridges!  This one is yellow.  (In searching of a spot to turn around, I drove through downtown and headed back to Newport, Kentucky on I-471 South).  Newport looks fine.  The aquarium is in Newport.  I really have to pee. Surely I can still make it on time to Colerain.

Newport provides an exit, so I turn around and head back over the river into Ohio.   

That’s a good sign.  I was on I-71 North before so it stands to reason that I should get back on it.  Or does it?  I’m headed to Columbus.  That can’t be right.  I really need to pee.  Oh, look, the Zoo. 

After back tracking to the junction I am finally reunited with I-75 and continue to Colerain, pondering the mysteries of exit numbers that decrease instead of increase.  Off the exit onto I-74, up through that narrow winding of Colerain Road, which Rosanna later informs me I do NOT pronounce like a local, and soon I have just passed our meeting place for a detour to the nearest quick-stop-because-I-absolutely-have-to-pee. 

Our afternoon was truly wonderful, gallivanting about, hugging their necks, walking in the park, eating Graeter’s ice cream to our hearts’ content and laying in the sun, wandering back and forth across the different colored bridges, splashing in the fountains, enjoying Claddagh’s Irish Pub at dinnertime.  The violent thunderstorms held till the moment we drove away and we had a lightning show on the way home.