Follow the Yellow Brick Road...

It's off to see the wizard!  I'm busy packing for the upcoming trip to Corning, NY for the workshop with Giles Bettison, which I previously wrote about here.  I'm really looking forward to it, once I get there.  That is the problem.  Driving from Michigan, around Lake Erie, and then across the southern tier of New York can be interesting this time of year.  I almost wrote "fun" instead of "interesting" but I remember what it was like two years ago, with probably two feet of snow, blinding white out blizzard conditions, and 47-car pile ups along the way.  I swore I wouldn't return in the winter, but I'm going back for the third time.  The weather forecast is promising sunny weather, albeit chilly.  

Google Maps says its 442 miles and 6 hours 53 minutes - or some such numbers.  Of course, I never can figure out how exactly they calculate it.  I drive the exact route they suggest, even putting in exact door to door locations and still my odometer says I went 10+ miles longer than Google indicates.  Now I've driven this most of the way, and the speed limit is 65 MPH almost the entire way except for the 31 miles in Michigan which is 70 MPH.  That is a 64.2 MPH average across the entire distance!  Google doesn't have to stop for bio-breaks, food, or even gas, but I do.  So in reality this will be closer to at least seven and a half hours, or even eight.  I have to watch my speed though, I like to go fast.  And Sunday mornings are a great time for getting tickets - as I found out on the Ohio Turnpike this time last year when I got a $100+ ticket.  He said I was doing 85+, when I know I was only doing 80.  65 is just too damn slow.


I live on the eastern side of the state for a reason.  It's called "Lake Effect Snow" and I've seen what it can do.  Western Michigan is bad enough, but western New York is just plain crazy with the amount of snow they get, sometimes without much warning.  I'll be driving through it, as you can see on my route map.