I put 2,195 miles on the blue Roadmaster in late September and early October on a trip that stretched to the shores of Chesapeake Bay, then back to the Lake Michigan shoreline. About the only thing this piece has to do with Door County is that it's where my trip ended. That and an incident at a gas station not far from the U.S. Naval Academy.

I've already vented in this space about the traffic stall in Chicago. Now, I thought I'd tell a bit about the rest of the trip, before I forget the details.

First, it was late in starting when an "Oh oh, that doesn't sound good" noise began rumbling from under the hood the Sunday before I was to leave. It was the air-conditioning compressor. The bearings had seized.

Not a good thing because it and every other engine accessory (alternator, water pump, power steering) run off one serpentine belt. If the compressor stopped spinning because of the bad bearings, the engine would spit out the belt and I'd have found myself looking for road service in some place like Vermilion, Ohio.

Having once done business with the Emergency Room in that western Ohio community (a sprained ankle outside a service plaza on the Ohio Turnpike many years back), the prospect of even stopping for gas at that exit sends cold shivers down my spine.

After a couple days of repairs, it was time to hit the road. First stop: Pittsburgh, where the leaders of the world's top 20 economic powers were holding a summit meeting. On the expressway in from the airport, there were cop cars on every overpass — all the V.I.P.s would be crossing under them to get out of town. Every exit to the downtown was closed off with police and soldiers staffing the barricades.

My niece, who has some impressive journalism credentials, spent the first day of the summit wearing an orange hat as an observer for the American Civil Liberties Union. She even had to explain to the demonstrators that the police officers had as much right as the protesters had to be in any particular spot.

On the second day, she went back, this time with a video camera. I watched the edited results. The protest march advanced from the college area to the downtown along streets lined with riot clad police from many places in the United States, including 80 from Milwaukee who went to learn the nuts and bolts of crowd control.

Insanity? How about rolling roadblocks as each dignitary in his or her own motorcade was separately whisked out to the airport?

Two days later, we had cake and ice cream with Uncle Bob, for his 98th birthday. I only had one slice, but yes, it was a corner piece with frosting on three sides.

Then it was on to Maryland where my old high school buddy has a home just off the water, about 45 minutes outside of Washington D.C.. Crab cakes made to order — little breading, lots of blue crab — lighthouses, sting rays and more.

A curious event occurred in the gas station outside the Sam's Club in Annapolis, where we ventured one evening. My friend pulled up to a pump behind a white Buick with a Wisconsin license plate. I recognized the dealer tag as being from Madison, so I hopped out of the passenger side and asked where the driver was from. He said he lived north of Madison and was headed home.

The guy at the next set of pumps — off to the right and tanking up a car with Maryland plates — chimed in, "I'm from Fond du Lac!" I claimed Sturgeon Bay, since the "first house south of the county line" wouldn't have been a quick description of my residence location, and being able to name-drop Door County seemed the smug thing to do.

The trip home was in a car filled with some cases of beer requested by children, Sweet Lebanon bologna (a cold-cut you can only find in within about a 125-mile radius of Lancaster, Pa.), some Tastee Cakes butterscotch crimpets (sponge cake with butterscotch frosting) and several two-liter bottles of lime pop — the green soda pop I've loved all my life and can now find regularly only in and around our nation's capitol.

Homeward bound, I stopped for the night in Cambridge, Ohio. The courthouse on a downtown street-corner looked like one of those old mansions you'd expect to be occupied by "Thing" and "Cousin It." It was decorated for Halloween — with purple spotlights illuminating a spooky looking façade.

As I stepped from the car in my own driveway, I was repeating Dorothy Gale's famous line; "There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place... ."

Devlin is a retired radio newsman who lives in the first house south of the county line. Contact him at (920) 487-3778 or at peterjdevlin@yahoo.com.