The road and Cleveland
Five minutes from home (or what’s been my home for a month, Buffalo) it hardly feels as though we’ve got two months and 12,000 miles ahead of us. But we do, so instead of turning at familiar turns we head south, hugging lake Erie on HWY 90. The sprawls of suburbia quickly dissipate as we enter Ohio wine country, rolling hills and leaves intent on autumn make for very beautiful scenery. To our right, when we climb a hill, we can see the lake, it really is gorgeous out here and I realize the mid-west flat will look plain and paltry in comparison.
Days of planning and final to-do’s left Brian in a state of sleep deprivation and all around exhaustion and I’m at the helm of the good ship ‘yet to be named.’ With Brian trying to find rest I have full control of tunes and let Dylan serenade me as the road dips south and the lake goes it’s own way out of view. “How many roads must a man walk down…” Dylan crows in his country baritone voice, “Before you call him a man?” His music seems made for the road, 6 minute ballads with long repetitious choruses to match the lull and tedium accompanying the dashed yellow line, while the harmonica wails out intermittently in time with the changing of scenery and rise and fail of the hilly road before us. I don’t really know what Bob is saying most the time, hell I bet he didn’t either, but he said something and said it with feeling and he makes more sense to me right now than he ever has before.
We begin to head west, nearing Cleveland, and the scenery quickly begins to reflect the change. Industrial buildings sit in place of forests and the fortunate few trees to still be standing don’t look as vibrant as their counterparts we’ve seen along the way. Depression I guess, living next to a factory would do the same to me. Lake Erie returns on our right and we see a public beach off the highway. As if the presence of a highway didn’t depreciate the view thoroughly enough, beach goers find themselves underneath a giant web of electrical lines and towers. Lovely.
To me, much of a cities beauty exists in the presence of people. The fact so many lives converge into one place, all separate but yet part of a whole is a fact that I have always loved. Unfortunately it’s Saturday and the people who spend their weekdays bustling about the city have decided to something somewhere else. What exactly I am unsure of, but I’m certain it’s not meandering aimlessly around the empty, lonely city of Cleveland as Brian and I have chosen to do. We checkout some of the architecture, the Browns stadium and after grabbing a sandwich and a beer at a sports bar, we head off to Chicago.
Days of planning and final to-do’s left Brian in a state of sleep deprivation and all around exhaustion and I’m at the helm of the good ship ‘yet to be named.’ With Brian trying to find rest I have full control of tunes and let Dylan serenade me as the road dips south and the lake goes it’s own way out of view. “How many roads must a man walk down…” Dylan crows in his country baritone voice, “Before you call him a man?” His music seems made for the road, 6 minute ballads with long repetitious choruses to match the lull and tedium accompanying the dashed yellow line, while the harmonica wails out intermittently in time with the changing of scenery and rise and fail of the hilly road before us. I don’t really know what Bob is saying most the time, hell I bet he didn’t either, but he said something and said it with feeling and he makes more sense to me right now than he ever has before.
We begin to head west, nearing Cleveland, and the scenery quickly begins to reflect the change. Industrial buildings sit in place of forests and the fortunate few trees to still be standing don’t look as vibrant as their counterparts we’ve seen along the way. Depression I guess, living next to a factory would do the same to me. Lake Erie returns on our right and we see a public beach off the highway. As if the presence of a highway didn’t depreciate the view thoroughly enough, beach goers find themselves underneath a giant web of electrical lines and towers. Lovely.
To me, much of a cities beauty exists in the presence of people. The fact so many lives converge into one place, all separate but yet part of a whole is a fact that I have always loved. Unfortunately it’s Saturday and the people who spend their weekdays bustling about the city have decided to something somewhere else. What exactly I am unsure of, but I’m certain it’s not meandering aimlessly around the empty, lonely city of Cleveland as Brian and I have chosen to do. We checkout some of the architecture, the Browns stadium and after grabbing a sandwich and a beer at a sports bar, we head off to Chicago.
posted by Eric at
11:59 AM
