I’m currently sitting in an hotel room at the Doubletree in Annapolis, MD, smack dab in the middle of week one of the United States Particle Accelerator School, where I’m learning about my future Ph.D field from Todd Satogata and Waldo MacKay (pronounced Mac-EYE, as he insisted on the first day). But first, I had to get there, and that meant driving.

I could have flown, but then I wouldn’t have a car that I don’t have time to use, nor would I have gotten to drive for five hours through two of my favorite places in the world: Long Island and New Jersey.

Driving in Long Island, particularly on the LIE, is an interesting activity. You never quite know how fast you’ll be able to get away with, and you see a fascinating mixture of busted ass ‘85 Daewoos and brand new Rolls-Royces or BMWs. Then you hit Manhattan, and your speed question is abruptly shifted to watching your speedo sit just below the 10 mark until you pay about $400 in tolls and cross the George Washington Bridge.Then, you’re in North Jersey. Northern New Jersey is, as best as I can tell, a depository for all the refuse of New York City, human and otherwise. The first thing you notice is the smell, which is primarily exhaust waste coupled with garbage and East River. The next thing you notice (or at least I notice), is that the women are notably less attractive across the board than Long Island. In the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop, the first one before you have to pay for the privilege to drive on the New Jersey Turnpike, there was not a single woman there that I was even remotely sexually interested in, and considering I haven’t had a conjugal visit in over three years now, that is a pretty damning observation.

The other interesting thing about the Turnpike is that all of the rest stops along the way are named after famous people from New Jersey, or at least I presumed this until I found the Alexander Hamilton Rest Stop. Hamilton, it’s worth noting, was born in the Caribbean, and his claim to fame in New Jersey was helping out Washington in a few important battles such as Trenton, I think. Anyway…

New Jersey the people becomes more tolerable as you move south through the state, but the drive shifts from a game of “name the contents of that hazy grey cloud coming from that building” to “try not to swerve into one of the billion or so trees on the side of the road to end the monotony”. There were not words for my excitement at paying $2 to drive across the Delaware Memorial Bridge and into something where there were “buildings”. From there, it was a relatively uneventful drive to get to the hotel in Maryland.

I’ll write more about what’s happened once something other than working from 9 in the morning until 10:30 or 11 at night happens.