I was amused to hear of an exhibit dedicated solely to Route 22, a road that's near-and-dear to your's truly. Now, I've never seen or heard of an exhibit dedicated to a road before (OK - maybe Route 66, out in the California desert - remember the song, sung in the 40's by Nat King Cole??? I digress!)... not that I've really been looking very hard, but I was attracted to the prospect, so I thought I'd share... Here's a link to the article.
Yeah, I live on route 22.
..... OK, I don't really live on the road, per-se (as the picture on the left may imply... By the way - I've entitled this picture "Highway Buddha"... pretty appropriate, eh? - enaways....), we happen to own a house located on the west side of it (you guessed it, behind me). Route 22 used to run about 30 feet to the west of where it now passes by my house - I still pull pieces of it out of my lawn each spring, relics pushed back up to the earth's surface by winter's frost heaves.
The Exhibit is located in Troy, New York, at The Arts Center of the Capitol Region, and the images were created by New York City -based photographer Bengamin Swett (go ahead, click his name, you can see samples of the Route 22 exhibit online).
I believe that the thing I find most interesting about someone being passionate enough about a road, 
to build an exhibit dedicated to it, is that I to, am a tad obsessed with it.
Look to the right... that rusty thing lying on the side of the road (Route 22) isn't a coat hanger, it's the ramains of one of the road flairs used to block traffic when my daughter got hit by a car and nearly died - right in front of our house, a little over 3 years ago.
I just took this picture today, by the way - those wires are still hanging out there, after all of this time... kind of creepy, since we get a whole lot of snow around here during the winter. There's still 2 of 'em out there, and they really should've disappeared a long time ago. I gotta tell you, I ain't gonna move them, they're a reminder... and, quite frankly, I'm a bit superstitous about this one!
I'm not going to get all morbid on you here, ohhh, no... far from it, I learned something very special about where I live, the people around me, and this road. My daughter was very, very lucky that spring day (what am I saying, we were ALL very, very lucky that day!), because even though she suffered a spinal cord injury, broken bones, serious internal trauma... the product of a car traveling at highway speeds hitting her, by some miracles, volunteer first aid workers that knew their stuff, very great doctors, seriously powerful medicine... and finally and most importantly, a wonderful community that pulled-together when they saw a family in crisis, she has enjoyed a nearly full recovery!
...Oh, So sorry about that horrible run-on (and on!) sentence, above!
By the way, gotta tell you, Alyssa was NOT happy about me taking that first picture up at the top of this musing... not happy at all!!!
Yup - I'm a really lucky guy... I live in a very special place, around very special people - right here, on Route 22.
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