I love her wit. We were driving north on Interstate A-1 from Fairbanks. If an Interstate in Alaska seems counterintuitive, drive on Interstate H-1 in Hawaii. At least that is a limited access, divided highway. I-A-1 is 2 lanes, unlimited access.
Anyway, the frost heaves are so horrible, and the local drivers so insane, that most frost heaves have skid marks a couple car lengths beyond them from getting airborne, then skidding on landing. We were driving the speed limit, and as much as I kid her about being the Duchess of Hazzard, we never became fully airborne. What speed are the locals driving? We call them whoop-de-whoops instead of frost heaves, and she embarked on a hilarious monolog in her Elmer Fudd voice about the locals complaining to the road department that their whoop-de-whoops were not getting them enough air. Then we hit a country station where the DJ was speaking in some sort of Texas/Alabama/Tennessee fusion accent, followed by another country station. "Are we not in the northernmost State in the Union? Did you mess up our flight plans? "
Alaska 's state motto: "Wash me."
I was on a road in the northern part of the Republic of Ireland that was like that. In that case, it was less frost heaving than the fact that it was laid over a peat bog a few hundred feet deep. Every few years (so I was told) they would essentially build a new road over the old road, which would be good until it, too sank into the peat. I figured that in a few hundred years the very first road would be sunk down to bedrock, and the whole thing would finally have a stable bed. ;-)
ReplyDeleteMy three days in Italy in 1991 had a little of the same surreality. The streets around our cousin's condo looked like the area in downtown LA with street vendors, and cracked and heaved sidewalks. The parking spaces were little marked and seldom parallel that I could see. Cars were parked higgledy piggledy. The Pirates of Penzance was on Tv, with the songs in English and the dialogue dubbed into Italian. On the third day, driving north through land that looked like the hills outside Valencia (Magic Mountain, not Lliotja de la Seda), the radio began to work and we heard pseudo American Country Western music in Italian. While watching The Pirates of Penzance the day before, I had a fever, so my mind kept trying to make German sense out of the dialogue, only to be derailed by english song lyrics.
ReplyDeleteWhat I really want to know is whether you saw enough Aurora Borealis to be happy. My spendy S-i-L thinks the only place to reeeeely reeely see the lights is somewhere in Finnland, and I'd like to be able to arm my brother so
every event soesn't have to occur at some place frequented by, and affordable only to The heirs of Greek shipping tycoon.