Thickly Settled

I'm in New England. It's an appropriate name for the region, because the locals speak English, but I can't understand them.

A few things you should know about New England.

#1 It's under construction. Pretty much the whole place... in general. They may call it "restoration", but let's not kid ourselves, shall we? The place is old and in a shambles. These guys are used to the construction in a scary, dangerous sort of way. Just up the road from my mother-in-law's house, they're redoing all the sidewalks. They're not stopping traffic... Oh no, that would be safe. Instead the workers have randomly chucked some cones about, and are just standing in the road with rakes and stuff while cars dodge them at 40 mph. Where the workers are completely blocking a lane, drivers have a special ESP that allows them to know whose turn it is to go. I don't have the ESP, so I consider myself lucky to have returned Mom-in-law's car with the side view mirrors intact (for the record, I totally missed those two teenagers on bikes).

#2 The traffic signs are for entertainment purposes only. Don't pay any attention to the speed limit signs, they will just distract you from the cars hurtling by. If you're on a bike, watch out for a gold colored Lexus SUV over the next couple of days. The driver is seriously distracted. Oh, and just down the road, there's a sign that reads, "Thickly Settled". It seems to me that this warning belongs on a container of Metamucil and not on a road, but who am I to second guess the road sign geniuses of New MassaVerConHam Island?

#3 The young people have been removed. In reality, there are a few little kids running around, as well as the two teenagers that I almost killed with the car, but other than that, rural New England has no young people. I have facial hair, so I felt reasonably safe being out in daylight.

#4 The states are really tiny. Back home, after a 3 hour drive, you're sill in the same county. Here, it's like, "Oh jeez, I dropped the crab pot. I think the float rolled over there into Vermont." Seriously, I got lost here on a bike a couple of years back and the lady at the junk shop gave me directions that INCLUDED the state name, "Fuhst, ya go down 103 to Massachusetts, then tuhn right towahd Rhode Island..."

So, if you ever make it here, enjoy the experience, but ask someone else to drive, and use a Sharpie to make some mustaches on your children, or else they may be taken from you right in the middle of your clam "chowda".