Woozle's Travels

Intro

I don't really like travelling, but I seem to have done an awful lot of it (with varying degrees of willingness). I'd love to hear from anybody living in any of these places.

Places I've Been

(for long enough to remember something about it; in no particular order)

NYC; Chicago, IL; Bloomington, IN; Washington, DC; SF Bay Area, CA; Baton Rouge, LA; New Orleans, LA; Madison, WI; Wilmington, NC; Wrightsville Beach, NC; Atlanta (and some northeastern suburbs), GA; Gainesville, GA; Madison, GA; Danielsville, GA. Providence, RI; Boston, MA. England: Oxford, London, Whitby, Farnborough, Cornwall; north and south Wales. Europe: Szombathely, Hungary; Vienna, Austria; several towns in (West) Germany, before the Wall came down; Paris, France; some small towns in northern Italy; somewhere mountainous in Switzerland.

Airports: Atlanta-Hartsfield International [ATL]; Raleigh-Durham [RDU] (before and after it was International); General Mitchell, near Milwaukee; Chicago-O'Hare; Logan (Boston); Heathrow and Gatwick (England).

• Favorite Subway System: tie between The London Underground (Mind the Gap!) and the Vienna subway.
• Favorite Train System: BritRail

Road Notes

Towns I can remember driving through several times but never stopping in:

• 1998:
  • Louisville, KY
  • Nashville, TN
  • Chattanooga, TN
  • Wausau, WI
  • Milwaukee, WI
  • Thorpe, WI
• 1985-9:
  • Richmond, VA

favorite road signs

• Information Police (Delaware)
• Squirrel Level Road (NC? VA?)
• Dumfries (same)
• Freedom Dr. West Charlotte, NC - I wrote a song based on this, but I'm not sure where I put it. The intersection has now (sadly) been rebuilt so there is one exit for both directions on Freedom Dr.

1985-9

Driving north near in Jersey just south of New York, you come to this place that seems like it came straight out of some version of Hell, like Piranesi meets Hieronymous Bosch or a Terry Gilliam movie or something. Nothing but concrete, dark metal piping, smog, grease, Borg spaceships with flaming exhaust vents...

1992 or 3

In Biloxi (or maybe it was just near Biloxi), in front of a McDonald's in the middle of this vast strip-mall wasteland of parking lots, concrete, and six-lane access roads, we came across this horribly injured cat hiding in the bushes. We tried to lure it out, but it was too terrified. We told the cashier, who clearly didn't know what to do about it, and left it some bits of fish sandwich.

Somewhere near the MS/LA border, the highway goes into this swamp. For miles and miles, you're on what amounts to a bridge about 30 feet off the ground with lush foliage on both sides. This kind of thing fascinates me; just think about how difficult it would be to get to somewhere underneath the bridge (without stopping the car and jumping off, I mean) -- you'd have to drive miles to the nearest exit, trek through miles of woods, and then raft through more miles of swamp...

cities I'm familiar with

...and which might be fun to visit even if they're not especially near anywhere I'm planning to go

• Providence, RI (1985-1990 or so)
• Ann Arbor, MI (1985)
• Baton Rouge, LA (to a lesser extent)

Edit Notes

• Pre-wiki edit log:
  • created 1999.06.13
  • updated 1999.06.28