Rosa trip: Day 1

[Archontis Pantsios]

Fellow Quackeroos:

I was planning the trip to Rosa since I arrived in the U.S. last January.
Despite having met him at an event last April in Pennsylvania, I still very
much wanted to make the trip to Louiville, Kentucky and visit him at his
home there. In what follows, I'll try to describe this 4-day trip from my
point of view, being well aware that I'll leave many details out since that
4-day period was chock-full of pictures and emotions. It'll take me 3
postings to complete this "report". I'd surely could have done a much
better job at describing it had a brought a tape-recorder along or had I
been taking notes; however, I did not make that trip as a reporter, but as
a friend and an admirer of Don's work.

As it turned out, I wasn't to make the trip all by myself. I kept bugging
my good friend from Sweden, Orjan Berglund, to visit me here in the U.S.
and make the trip to Louisville together. Fortunately, at the last minute,
Orjan decided to visit me for 11 days, May 25-June 4.

I picked up Orjan from the Binghamton Greyhound bus terminal in the
afternoon of May 25. We spend Memorial Day weekend driving around the
Finger Lakes region in upstate New York, in anticipation of the Rosa trip
we had scheduled for May 30-June 2.

*DAY 1: Tuesday, May 30, 2000*---We woke up bright and early that morning
(actually I was awake since 5:00 a.m. full of excitement and anticipation).
The weather was summer-like, after having treated us with record-setting
rainfalls during the month of May. During Orjan's 11-day stay, we only saw
a few drops of rain! I was kidding him that he brought the sun along (when
he left, it started raining again!). Earlier we had studied the map
carefully and we had mapped out our route. From Binghamton we'd take route
17 and drive west, then take interstate 90 and cross into Pennsylvania
first and then into Ohio. At Clevelend, we'd take interstate 71 that would
take us all the way to Louisville. On the map the distance looked short!!!

We departed Binghamton at 8:00 a.m. and started our long drive to
Louisville on my rented Toyota Camry 1990. The first leg of our trip until
we reached Erie, Pennsylvania, was probably the most interesting in terms
of scenery with lots of rolling hills. After we passed Cleveland, Ohio, we
made a stop around 3:00 p.m. and had lunch at a fast food place. An
interesting site in that joint was a group of Amish people (they had to be
modern Amish, since they were using automobiles!). 

After we got back on the road, we realized that we still had quite a bit of
driving to do before reaching Louisville. We calculated the total distance
to be ~700 miles, and we had just passed the mid-point! We tried to pep
ourselves up thinking of all the things we'd see once at Rosa's place--plus
we were not really in any big hurry, since we had planned to spend the
night at a motel outside of Louisville. 300 miles later, and after driving
thru the cities of Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, we stopped for the night
at a small town called Carrolton, ~40 miles from Louisville. After settling
at our room at a Day's Inn, we went to a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken,
picked up dinner to go, and went back to our room to enjoy our chicken
watching an NBA game between the L.A. Lakers and the Portland Trailblazers!
We fell asleep knowing that the next day would be "THE DAY"!

(To be continued.......)

Cheers,

Archontis




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Archontis L. Pantsios, Ph.D.
Visiting Associate Professor 
Department of Economics
Binghamton University
Binghamton, New York 13902
USA
tel: (607)777-4726
fax: (607)777-2681
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