June 22, 2007

Today I had to drive up to my old stomping grounds to run some errands for my high school alumni marching band. I’m trying to find a good price on t-shirts for the band members and I had a hot lead to follow up, so I made the 150 mile round trip. It was worth it, plus I got to have lunch with my mother which was very enjoyable.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in a rural part of Upstate New York, downwind from a group of nuclear power plants. I’ve always been a fan of driving along the Lake Ontario shoreline on the closest road possible, and these rides used to take me quite close to these power plants. Close, as in within hundreds of feet of the reactor buildings and cooling tower.

Since I was in the vicinity I decided to see if 9/11 had changed security measures enough to prevent me from doing this. They have. There are now big signs proclaiming the presence of security gates, requiring photo identification, on each side of the group of plants. One is no longer able to drive really close. Now you can drive only sort of close.

So I took a picture from a close as I could get to the plants. After snapping the photo a state police car came whipping by me. I have to admit this made me nervous, though I don’t know why because technically I don’t think I was doing anything wrong.

I decided to just get the heck out of there.