Bad postcard of the week:

Breezewood, 'a polyp on the nation's interstate highway system'
From:  The Grand Rapids Press

Ah, the majestic skyline of Breezewood, Pa. – a place Business Week in 1991 called “a polyp on the nation's interstate highway system."

I've been there. Of course, anyone who has driven through Pennsylvania along I-70 has been sucked into the neon haze that is the “City of Motels.”

I was on an assignment in 2001 that involved an overnight bus ride with a group of activists headed to Washington, D.C.

No one sleeps well on a bus, and we pulled into Breezewood at dawn, hungry, tired and perhaps a bit irritable.

We stopped at a place for breakfast that seemed to thrive on bus groups. The food was awful – hard, thin pancakes that I couldn't cut with a fork – and the line for the ladies' room stretched the length of the dining room.

I opened the door to the men's room and found that every square inch was filled with middle school kids changing from their sleeping clothes into whatever they would be wearing as they walked among the monuments later that day. I closed the door and backed away.

Several of us contemplated sneaking to one of the fast food places across the street, but we feared being left behind -- and no one wanted to spend a moment longer than necessary in Breezewood.

I remember the group heading back on the bus still hungry, just as tired and perhaps a bit more irritable.

Taking a flight back to Grand Rapids to file the story, I was spared the bus trip back home. But I later caught up with the organizer. She said there was a near rebellion when the bus headed back into the same Breezewood establishment on the way back.

Confronting the man behind the wheel, she learned the reason why he had stopped there not once, but twice: Bus drivers eat for free.