{"id":439,"date":"2006-08-20T23:18:13","date_gmt":"2006-08-21T04:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackgate.net\/blog\/index.php\/back-from-vacation"},"modified":"2006-08-20T23:18:13","modified_gmt":"2006-08-21T04:18:13","slug":"back-from-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackgate.net\/blog\/back-from-vacation\/","title":{"rendered":"Back from vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Susan and I just got back from Sandusky, Ohio, home of the Cedar Point<\/a> amusement park. Cedar Point is reputed to have the best collection of roller coasters in the USA, which is why we went. We did have a good time, but you know, I think Busch Gardens Europe (formerly known as Busch Gardens: The Old Country<\/a>) is on par with it, and Busch Gardens is a nicer amusement park to spend the day in.<\/p>\n

We also visited Harpers Ferry, WV<\/a>, during what just happened to be the centennial celebration<\/a> of the first meeting of the Niagra Movement<\/a> on US soil. Pretty cool. We also got to see (from the outside) the only English Norman castle in the USA, Berkeley Castle<\/a>. Too bad it isn’t open for tours anymore.<\/p>\n

I noticed some strange things on our trip. Some of them were obvious, and easy to talk about. For example, in Pennsylvania you can’t buy wine at the grocery store. You can only buy it at state-run stores. When I asked a fellow in PA where I could find the wine in the grocery store, he made a disparaging comment on his “backward” state. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, you can buy liquor at the corner 7-11. I kind of wish I had, just so that I could say that I did.<\/p>\n

It was also hard to miss the demographic differences, but those are more difficult to talk about. People react strangely when you notice their differences. For example, there seemed to be an unnatural number of lean, reasonably attractive women in Sandusky, Ohio. Literally half of the people on the shuttle bus going to Cedar Point on our first day were young women. I do not know why. It was also hard to miss that Ohio is a very “white” state. Here in central and south-eastern Virginia, I am used to there being a roughly 50\/50 mix of light-skinned and dark-skinned people. I think of this as normal. It was very odd to see a few dark faces in an otherwise oatmeal-colored crowd. I have to wonder how it would feel to be the X in a crowd of Os. I would have liked to ask a few people how they felt being a literal as well as figurative minority, but as I said, people react strangely when you draw attention to such things, so I didn’t.<\/p>\n

I took a bunch of photos during our trip, using our nifty new Nikon digital camera. I’ll put them online soon, probably tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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