I-84, Connecticut

Driving from NJ to Boston, the eternal question, take the Merritt or 684 to 84. Despite the fact that I always run into trouble between Danbury and Waterbury due to a long-running construction project, despite the fact that the Merritt has been one of the pretty roads qua road in America since the time of its building (see how Siegfried Gideon sung its praises as a utopian project in his 1941 classic Space, Time, and Architecture), I so often take the 84s because they're a 65 mph road and the Merritt has its own set of issues (all too often traffic slows down because cops have pulled David Letterman over for speeding).

Silly me. There's always trouble between Danbury and Waterbury. For what? We breezed across the GWB, up the West Side Highway, through the Bronx and Westchester -- through New York City, dammit, and then get hung up in the middle of nowhere.

Connecticut is as multi-personality (I hate the mis-overuse of "schizophrenic") a state as you can get. The Danbury rest area is pure upper crust Connecticut. Lots of Mercedeses. It has its own rock wall, for Christ's sake. By one pretty large, very climbable rock is a sign: "No climbing on objects." Clearly it refers to the rock. Presumably the sign-makers thought that by saying "objects" they could dissuade climbers from getting on the water fountains and picnic tables. No luck. Natalie and I climbed up on one of the latter until Mary told us to get down so Graham wouldn't get ideas. And we were having such fun.

Oh yes, Connecticut and MPD. At a gas station near Meriden, lots of Firebirds and big hair. A bathroom like a war zone. Maybe we don't see it in Princeton, but anecdotally I feel like there's more vestigial Springsteen culture in Connecticut than in NJ. In the Garden State, it feels like more of that has been shunted aside by Asian and Hispanic immigrants. Which is fine by me. They bring better food, better attitudes.