The Light at the End of the Tunnel is Canada

"I am halfway to the middle of nowhere", I texted Thomas last night around 6.

"You'll get there yet" he replied.

"If Zeno was wrong, anyway" I told him.

Zeno might have been more right than I thought...Or maybe he had nothing to do with it. My mother and I had set out around 4 PM from Boston, heading to visit St Lawrence, one of my top college choices. A daunting six hour drive, and I had had no dinner. Getting my energy from almond Hershey's Kisses, I stayed awake for what would be an eight out car drive.

As we were heading up, there were many wonderful town names—"Mechanicsville" and "Schenectady", among many others. We tracked our distance from Montreal, heading north, 170 miles, 165 miles, 145 miles, 132 miles, 140 miles...did Montreal just get farther away? And what exit were we supposed to be taking anyway...one set of directions said Valley Farm Road. Only later at around exit 35 did we read the second set of directions—exit 23! Ugh. We were nearing the Canadian border, and there was no quicker route within the US that we knew of, not having a map. So we headed back, running low on gas, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.

Finally we found a gas station open late, around exit 28. "It's closer to go right up to the boarder, at exit 42" the people in the store told us as we bought a NY map and peanutbutter bars. So back up we went... Exit 42 was right at the edge of the Canadian border, and we were getting worried as we approached the border that we wouldn't find the exit before we got to Canada. Suddenly both the border and the exit came in view. In front of us was a truck, and beyond that truck was a glowing red light. "What is that?" "Canada?"

We never figured out why Canada was glowing, as we turned westward to travel through many quaint little NY towns in the pitch black (except for glowing red Canada to our right). In Mooersville we mooed, saying that though it was late we were still mooooving. We tracked our progress to Potsdam, which seemed to periodically get *farther* away rather than closer, making me think the distance was measured in a straight line rather than by the road.

We did finally get to Canton, at one AM, when I got to sleep.

Sachi