Thursday, June 11th

Endgame

The final day dawned over the plains of western Ohio. Its corn fields started right behind the hotel parking lot. I dawdled through the morning. There wasn’t much left to do. By motorway Cincinnati was less than two hours away. It was almost noon when I finally took off, past the motorway junction and onto a small road heading south.

It started off as a proper prairie road: dead straight with the occasional ninety degree turn, some very generous, some viciously tight. It crossed through serious farm land. Large fields had their boundaries drawn by tree lines, perhaps a stream. It wasn’t dead flat. There were some stray hills and atop the hills were the farm houses and barns. There were villages, too, dozing in the midday sun. Hardly a car was about, hardly anything happened at all and probably hadn’t for centuries. What a great finale.

Outside Lynchburg, a dusty prairie town big enough to have a traffic light across Main Street, a helicopter was hovering over trees. As I came closer, I could see that something was dangling from it on a long wire. It turned out to be a giant circular saw with four disks, perhaps a metre across, were stacked atop another. The contraption was used to cut back tree branches along a power line by day. By night it was certainly chasing secret agents along river banks.

Another town, whatever its name: a few houses, a few intersections. After, the country suddenly became hilly again. There were a lot more trees, entire forests, even. The road’s straight part was over. It started winding about even if this wasn’t strictly necessary. After crossing a main highway before Sardinia, it lost its number. It was aiming in the direction of a street shown on the map and, a quick clock check, I had enough time for a little experiment. So I kept going. I arrived in Arnheim, a village not even mentioned on the map. Two unlabelled intersections in quick succession demanded choices. I followed the sun south.

The road became narrower and lost its centre line. This was worrying, but a pressed on. It travelled through mixed farmland. It was getting hillier. Then there was a river to follow which had created its own park to both sides of its shore. Houses had stopped quite a while ago.

The river park ended, the road jumped back onto flat farmland and—ended. And once again it ended exactly where it should have. I had entirely too much luck with navigation on this trip. Something terrible was surely to happen soon.

But no time to worry. Large screaming billboards announced the immanence of Georgetown. They were followed by a specimen of any fast food chain known to man. Then a red traffic light. I stopped next to an old battered pickup with its hood missing. A big church started downtown. Main Street was crossed where a huge red brick monster marked the centre of town.

Out of town, road signs gave a quick refresher on basic traffic rules, that you have to wear seat belts and what solid yellow lines meant. After crossing a river the road went up a hill and then it was flat again. With Cincinnati approaching fast, it also was very busy. The fun part of the trip surely was over.

For the moment villages were still separated by farmland. This changed in Bethel. The road grew two extra lanes and civilization came back in earnest. There were traffic light after traffic light and, I couldn’t quite believe my continued luck, they were all green. Something surely must have been afoot.

Cincinnati’s ring motorway brought me to the airport without much fuss. Luckily I wasn’t planning on taking the motorway south. There had been an accident somewhere and massive traffic jams were leading the way. I passed them by, went hunting for a petrol station and, having been successful two towns over, parked the car for the last time.