Thoughts from the Road and Porkopolis

Today we traveled to the Cincinnati metro area because my daughter's dance posse troupe group is competing in a national event this weekend.

It's an easy drive from East Central Illinois to Cincinnati, city nicknamed Porkopolis but named after a true badass Roman named Cincinnatus. Only three and a half hours. And once you get past the southern part of Indianapolis, the countryside gets beautiful. I've never been in this part of the country, but the Ohio River Valley is a handsome spot of land, no doubt. As we ventured toward the metro area, the landscape got quite hilly -- not rolling hills, but more reminiscent of the Ozark "Mountains." Because I've used to driving the interstate along wide open spaces, I always feel slightly off kilter driving fast with all the greenery and hills close to the divided four-lane. I had the same reaction when Mrs. Nasty and I took a trip to upstate New York and Pennsylvania over a decade ago when I presented some research at the International Conference on Mark Twain Studies in Elmira, NY. You can take the boy out of Iowa, but you can't take the Iowa landscape out of the boy.

This whole dance shindig is at one of the many Great Wolf Lodges around the country. Whoever thought up this concept was smart as hell. It's a faux gargantuan log cabinesque hotel with a conference center, arcade, restaurants, ubiquitous Starbuck's, and (mostly) indoor water park with slides, rope climbing deals, and other such frivolity. One of the water slides is like a roller coaster. Another slide can be done by a whole family of five. This curmudgeonly bastard is going to get wet.