From the introduction:
The cutesy tourist trap named Centralia lies practically smack-dab in the midst of a highway to the Southern Isles from up north. A couple more miles down the road will get you to the Million-Mile Bridge, so named because although it is affixed to 127 mangrove islands, reef-keeps, and abbholethsk-lobster dens it actually spans about 35 miles. It just feels like a million miles to drive that way during the heat of the summer months, stuck in traffic, praying for a toilet or convenient reef-keep with a Slurpong machine. The highway nicely bisects the Mid-Kingdom waterway at 9 different locations, and so to accommodate the corpse-barges, cargo ships, and blimp-carriers the drawbridges raise in a staccato hindrance to forward auto-conveyance traffic. Many tourists give up and stop instead at Centralia, which has pleasant-enough beaches and not too-seedy motels.