Here I am in the lobby of the Comfort Inn in East Greenbush NY a little east of Albany (an excellent spot I might add) when what do my eye's perceive? Gary's lament:

(trembling slightly....)
but, Alan, if you're on the road...wh-wh-ooo wiiilll run Friday chat? We, we we gotta have our fix.....
(shakes, shudders, pale trembling face...)

So it is both with a warm heart and yet a feeling somewhat like coming to terms with one's stalker that we have today's Friday chat from the road:

• Highway hotels are a favorite thing of mine. They play much the same role as airport terminals. You are in transit. It is not like a resport hotel or one in your favorite destination for an urban fix. Gotta have a pool, gotta have snacks, free breakfast and a gas station nearby that doesn't give you the creeps. This particular gas station here has large bottles from nearby Ommegang as well as a Dunkin Donuts outlet. You got to love that: local craft for the beer during the Phillies and Braves and generic international for the morning zap. This sort of travel is also something in that style of being nowhere and anywhere. I really have no time to learn anything about East Greenbush NY and I do not want it foisted upon me. I want pleasing dislocation because by 10 am I'll be gone. Like a Gordon Lightfoot song with someone who will bring you more pillows if you just dial the front desk and ask.

• While on the road, even if just since 4 pm yesterday, you immediately get a sense that you don't know what is going on. US sports talk radio doesn't help. Why Canada can't sustain a sports talk radio network when every city over 75,000 in the US has its own local guy going on about the local team is beyond me. Yesterday I got a very good hour from WHEN 620 on the AHL team for Syracuse, the Crunch, and their prospects in the upcoming first round of the playoffs against the Mantiboa Moose. Imagine the guy in Syracuse who is fixated on taking apart the Manitoba Moose in four: Crush them! Crush them!

• Apparently, according to Dick, George gave Dick and George the right to declassify information in an executive order. But Dick won't say when they used it, who else has the general power and won't (I am assuming maybe) show anyone the actual executive order. This is a lot like a general warrant, something barred by the US constitution, which was an appointment of an officer by the British pre-Revolution to search anywhere anytime on suspicion. It is much better for accountability and transparency to make folk write down on a piece of paper what facts exist and why they are relying on a power in like of those facts so that there is something to test the use of the power against. One would hope that the executive order would contain a test as well - a purpose which justifies declassification - so that if the purpose does not exist then a declassification would be unwarranted. And the scope of the disclosure as well. Not defining who gets to know is fairly stunned, like the time Dad let the mouse out of the cage without shutting the door to the room. Lots of scurrying where you never expected you'd be scurrying.

• If the Jays really are good this year, I know I will bandwagon with the best of them, I will say I liked them when - and frankly having watched them when there was nothing else to watch during the Jose Cruz Jr era I am owed that right. But it sure is depressing listening to them beat the Red Sox for the second night in a row. Tonight, however, Ichiro is at Fenway. I love Ichiro. I try to excell at all things in life if only to be like the tiniest speck of grey in the shadow of the man that is Ichiro. I will drive though southern Vermont and New Hampshire today on highway 9 in an Ichiro-like manner.

Well, there you are time to get the DD java and wake everyone up. Miles to go before I see the sea.