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Cruising the Highways

On Route 78 West, just before the junction with 287, there's a sign for "Scenic Overlook". I go past this every time I head over to Rutgers, and have often been curious as to what's up there. So the other day, as I was heading off in that direction, I broke off my regular journey, and went up to the overlook. To my surprise (knowing the way things work, I expected the place to be deserted) there were a few cars parked in a small car park, with a wall over which was a view. So I parked, and went to see what was so good about the view.

It was around this time that I noticed something slightly odd. Of the half dozen or so vehicles I could see, all were occupied by men. Unaccompanied men. About half were standing or walking, smoking a cigarette or whatever, and the remainder were sat in their cars. This struck me as odd. I felt somewhat unnerved by this situation, so I quickly turned about, got back in my car, and resumed my journey.

Perhaps I was being paranoid. Perhaps I was mistaken in my assessment of the demographics, and there were also a mixture of families and couples at the other end of the car park that I didn't notice. Perhaps this just represented a uniform sampling of the collection of people out and about in their cars on a Saturday around lunchtime. I can't be sure. But, nevertheless, my suspicion, trained by years of movies and colourful fiction had kicked in, and I didn't want to stick around to see whether there was an innocent explanation for the collection of people who had decided to take in the scenic overlook. I didn't even stay long enough to get a good enough look at view to see whether it really was scenic.

So, I give this spot a low score. Stay tuned for more reviews of the highs and lows of suburban New Jersey.

In other news: I am currently preoccupied with Cairo. Specifically, is this as easy to spell in Greek as it sounds?

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