Automocoblogography

is the spine of MOCO and the defining highway of my MOCO experience, having grown up in Gaithersburg a quarter mile off 355, now owning a house a half mile from 355 but

is my favorite state road in MOCO, but only west of

where they intersect near Casa Satanica in the Quince Orchard section of Gaithersburg (called by realtors "North Potomac"), but 124 has always been a odd, disjointed route, long before the Mid-County Highway was built and 124 re-routed to it through Montgomery Village (in theory, 124 once ran along Diamond Avenue through Gaithersburg long before there was a Montgomery Village, though there was never any signage as such through Gaithersburg, but there was a shield where the road curved left past Washington Grove and the humpback bridge) and doesn't really start proper until it interects

near the MOCO Airpark. 115 runs east from 124 as Muncaster Mill Road all the way to

in Norbeck (which is the same 28 but not the same 28 that I love), 300 yards from

in a different country than it started. Anyway

runs north to Damascus as Woodfield Road, past Goshen, home of prebilics and bryds and vetters and Audrey of My Heart's house and terminates at

which is in itself worthy of a future post, a wildly S-shaped route, which from Damascus heads due south and then sharply east to intersect

in the Dismal Empire of Olney (about three miles north of Norbeck), a town know solely for the traffic jam caused each rush hour by that junction, but what's really odd about

is in Etchison, when it turns due south,

branches off to the east to run for seven drop-dead gorgeous miles to intersect

afterwhich it runs five more drop-dead gorgeous miles to intersect

again, this time in Ashton, where it continues south as New Hampshire Ave. The section between Ashton and Colesville is renowned (locally at least) for its dozens of churches and temples of many different religions and their denominations, and then

continues south through White Oak and then Hillandale, which is as far in my imagination from Dickerson, where my favorite MOCO road

finally reaches the Frederick County line after heading west from

and Casa Satanica, then goes past

which goes west from Darnestown to Seneca Aqueduct and McKee-Beshers Wildlife Reserve, then

which goes north to the horror that is Germantown, then

which goes west from Dawsonville to the foreign country of Poolesville (imagine Burtonsville, imagine Poolesville, figure out the faster route to get from one to the other), then

which isn't 121 anymore, the state giving the section between 28 and Boyds to MOCO to maintain (Boyds home to the now underwater Ten Mile Creek Road, where Willy Bayne in a cocaine and whiskey-fueled fury ran down the cat), then

which runs east to Boyds, then all the way back to Gaithersburg, from Boyds to Gaithersburg called Clopper, then

north from Beallsville to the charmingly otherworldly Barnesville then Comus then Hyattstown where it dead ends at the spine that is

From Beallsville

is downhill all the way to Dickerson, where after you go under the railroad bridge to the stop sign, you make a right on Mt Ephraim and go four miles to the base of Sugarloaf Mountain, which is my Olympus.

Here's Alton Brown with my (O, I wish) blegging philosophy:

But you know, I never take fans into consideration when making Good Eats. Ever. I make it for me. I completely make Good Eats for me. I don’t care about them. I mean I care about them, I want people to watch the show and like the show, but I’m not going to allow their wishes and desires to change what I do. If I make it and they like it, great, but I’d say the same thing about Food Network. I don’t care if they like it either. I make it for me, and that’s how it stays pure. That’s how I’ve stayed on for 10 years, is that every single one is an artistic endeavor from one little sick, twisted, obsessed little guy, and that’s me. So knowing, for instance, if fans will accept this ingredient or that ingredient, I don’t care. I care about it not being a product that Food Network wouldn’t want to use because it wouldn’t rate well, because my main job is to make TV shows that rate well. And in that angle I do. But I’ve fought for certain ingredients and gotten them through. We did a parsnip show this year. Well, it’s taken me three years to get the okay to do a parsnip show because it hasn’t been mainstream enough. Or you know, how exciting can a parsnip be? But one of my things is to say, “Look, give it to me. I’ll make parsnips, you’ll line up for an evening of parsnips by the time I’m done.” I think every food story is interesting, there are no boring foods to me. So I come at it from the view [that] a food is not more exciting or less exciting because it’s obscure.

Tomorrow,

and it's two-named two miles between

and

that might as well be a hundred miles.

Or, now that I've got this out of my system - and here's truth: if I hadn't finally posted this after thinking about it for the past two years off and on and the past week intensely, this would have gnawed at me harder each day until I posted it - perhaps not.