Three Beautiful Things 09/23/17: On the Road, Chrissy Hynde's Ohio, Beer and Wine and Chipotle Bowls

1. By design, the Deke and I did not spring immediately into the Sube and head west at the crack of day. We'd had a long week of getting out of our apartment home and we opted for a late morning start. I ran a couple of errands to the Post Office and to FedEx and by about 10:30 or so, we packed up the car and headed for Elyria, OH, just over six hours away.

2. Two years ago, the Deke, Patrick, and I stayed at a Hampton Inn in Elyria, OH and I'd forgotten that the area around the Hampton and the Day's Inn, where we spent Saturday night, looked like what the USA would look like had the Communist bloc won the Cold War. Huge shuttered former big box superstores surrounded by bleak, empty, cracking parking lots dominate the landscape, with a few straggling businesses like PetSmart and Olive Garden hanging on. The Days Inn we stayed at was frayed and dingy, with carpeting taken from the seating area of a roller skate rink, colorless paint peeling and chipping, and the hallways barely illuminated with forty watt bulbs. Our room's air conditioning sounded like a malfunctioning East German Baade 152 taking off and was infused with a Fabreeze air freshener so I kept waking up, thinking I was sleeping in a scented 13 gallon Hefty trash bag.  We made the best of our cramped depressing environment, though, and are glad we won't likely be spending another night in Elyria, OH. Ever.

Chrissy Hynde sang about the decay of her Ohio hometown back in 1982. Remember? If not, it's right here.

3. What did we do to make the best of our crummy room? Well, first of all, we reminded ourselves that we have stayed in worse rooms -- the Hotel 6 near East Lansing, MI back in 2015 springs immediately to mind -- and I went out into the heart of this decaying suburb, this replica of East Berlin (circa 1983), and found a Chipotle shop and bought us each a steak bowl and I went to Marc's, a dying grocery store, and found a four pack of tiny bottles of Merlot, a cold six pack of Bud, and a 16 oz can of Coca Cola. The Coke went perfectly with the Chipotle food, the Deke loved the little bottles of wine -- it helped our room seem like a passenger jet plane -- and I wanted a light, easy to drink beer, full of nostalgic tastes, that I could drink fast so I could finally wind down after all that driving.  I kept hearing a voice say, "This Bud's for you!"