We got through Sandy with minimal damage, this time.  Then we had to rush to get ready to leave very early Wednesday morning.  Ira had to take the hurricane shutters down and put back things that had blown around or away in spite of our precautions.  We have to replace a bird feeder, but that’s nothing.We drove to Ann Arbor for the Port Huron Conference at which I was presenting on a panel. We took the truck because it’s much newer than our old Volvo – thanks to the Toyota recall of our old truck.  It’s more reliable than our car and has four wheel drive.On the Mass Pike, it was porta-potties and dark foodplaces most of the way, although toward Springfield, we found a Boston Market open.  We plowed on across New York State, very happy that although ominous clouds loomed overhead, it did not rain until we were almost to Pennsylvania.  Then it made up for the restraint.  We saw almost no cars but many trucks heading east and I counted 108 utility trucks heading toward the devastated areas, once I started counting them.We had booked a hotel in Westlake Ohio, just past Cleveland to avoid the morning rush hour. But when we arrived, the hotel was shut. no power.  It was eight pm and we wondered if we could find a place to spend the night.  From I90 I saw lights in a Holiday Inn.  We got the 2^nd to last room.It was quite a scene. The town was dark and many people had flocked to the Holiday Inn because only it had power.  It was full of families with their kids – celebrating no school – running around the swimming pool and chasing each other through the corridors.  People had brought their dogs. I rode up in the elevator with two families and three dogs and two of the dogs got into a fight in the elevator.  Supper available in the restaurant was warmed over lasagna that had seen its finest hour long before.  Breakfast was even skimpier and inedible, but we were terribly happy to have a bed to sleep in, although there were no towels and no soap.  Still, we were better off than one man who was begging for sheets.  It seemed they had run out of them.We forged on to Ann Arbor where I was on a panel and then afterward, gave a poetry reading for Women and Gender Studies.  We stayed in the Bell Tower, which I’m quite fond of – have stayed there several times before doing one gig or another at the U of Michigan, where I went to college and where my papers are stored.  My archival librarian introduced me.  Good crowd.  In Ann Arbor, it was blowy but sunny.The next morning we headed for South Bend.  Having grown up traveling all over Michigan with my parents – my father installed and repaired heavy machinery for Westinghouse – I have fond memories of a number of places – for instance,Bay City, where my mother and I would sit on the verandah of a hotel for business travelers and I would play with Isabella wooly bear caterpillars and where in the restaurant, they had a relish plate, which I thought wonderful.  in Grand Rapids,there was a fountain that at night was illuminated with colored lights.  So I enjoy driving around Michigan.Anyhow, the women in Women’s Studies at Indiana U at South Bend were very sweet.  I gave my Sex Wars powerpoint lecture.  The audience kept asking me to talk more but finally I ran out of time.  Sold a lot of books. Then we hit the road going back east.  We got as far in Erie PA in heavy rain.Got up at 5:30 and drove on in snow alternating with rain for hours and hours.  Finally after we crossed the Berkshires, the sky turned blue and the sun shone between huge flotillas of solid looking clouds.We got home at 5:15 to six ecstatic cats and 202 emails.