We came to the realization that today would probably be one of the last days this year for a pleasant drive in our open-top, two-seat roadster. I took a day away from work, JoAnn canceled her commitments and we headed the car north by north-west. We eventually reached the Case Western Reserve University, Dittrick Medical History Center. It is a remarkably interesting museum and we enjoyed it enormously. In addition to the old surgical instrument, old medical text books and early-twentieth-century x-ray equipment, a traveling collection, The History of Contraception, was on display. Condoms (one as old as 1890), cervical caps, a whole lot of elaborate paraphernalia for "douching", sponges, slide-rule and circular calculators for the rhythm method, IUDs, literature promoting women's rights to control their bodies, literature condemning women who used contraceptives as menace to public health and morals, birth-control pills, and a European-style "bidet". I never knew that the original purpose of a bidet was contraception. I now know that Catholic Bishops are the reason that American hotels never had bidets. The whole museum experience was for no admission charge. The best things in life are free.

We completed our visit to the museum at about 1 PM and went out looking for lunch. "We'll see a nice place somewhere on the way home", I told JoAnn. A wrong turn took us into a part of town known to locals as Little Italy. That was a very lucky thing. We parked in front of a place named Presti's Bakery. Wonderful, wonderful! I had a spinach and eggplant calzone, JoAnn had a meatball sandwich with a really killer tomato sauce. Two capuchino with cinnamon on top. Fabulous. We took home two loves of freshly-baked split-top Italian bread. Now get this. Meatball sandwich, $5 including tax, calzone, $3.50, capuchino, $3, two loafs of bread, $4. It's a two-and-a-half hour trip from Pittsburgh to Cleveland, but it would be worthwhile just for the super-delicious bread!

~Michael