Road Trip Follies
Thanks to Lars Jacobsen for suggesting this topic.
Yes, the road trip. That ringing phrase ripe with the promise of adventure, enlightenment and the tacit permission to act somewhat irresponsibly for a weekend or a little longer. Before you start on your adventure, you have to get there, and that can make the ensuing adventure seem anticlimactic. Herewith are a few of my favorite road trips.
- Driving up to Maine, with Lars for the New England Masters in January '97. We were so organized we packed a meal to eat in the car as we headed north so we wouldn't waste time and trash our innards eating fast food. It was a long grind in the dark, trading places behind the wheel. Around 1 A.M., in the depths of the Maine superslab, I began to see red and yellow flashing lights. The cops don't drive towards you if they're going to give you a ticket, do they? I was sure that Elvis's UFO had landed to take us away. That moldy oldy, it'll be more direct."The Purple People Eater" came into my head. The lights got bigger and bigger, and we practically ran into them before I realized that we were at a toll barrier on the Turnpike. What a bonehead.
- Going up to Craftsbury, January 1999. My wife and I decided to avoid the marathon drive and stay overnight in Readsboro, Vermont and continue up to Craftsbury the next day. Snow and sleet were falling when we left NJ, and driving north on the New York Thruway it turned into plain snow. "Why take the long way around, going through Bennington?" I thought. "If we go up Route 2 from Albany it'll be more direct." When we were rolling along on Route 2, I thought, "Great! There's no traffic, we'll make decent time." Brilliant plan, until I began to notice the inexorable climb, one switchback after another, on three inches of fresh powder. Not even a snowplow had passed through. We didn't see another vehicle as we crawled over the top of the pass and descended down the other side, and it was still snowing hard. To make matters worse, our only option for dinner in Williamstown seemed to be a Blimpie sub outlet. Agita here we come!
- Headed up to Tug Hill for the Try-It Races several years ago. There had been plenty of early-season snow, even in New Jersey. The January thaw hit a couple days before the weekend. I hit the road on Friday evening in a light rain which grew progressively heavier as I drove into Pennsylvania. By the time I got onto Interstate 81 north of Scranton, it looked like maximal "sturm und drang" right out of Wagner. In the trough between 2 hills, water was pouring down over the road like someone had opened a giant fire hydrant. There was debris all over to the point where I was driving well below the speed limit. A couple of miles after that, the traffic just stopped. There wasn't even one of those 10-mile construction zones that the Pa. Highway Dept. seems fond of. I might as well have been on the Parkway headed to Seaside Heights on Friday evening, except that the radio stations sucked. I sat there for light years until the traffic started crawling again, and at the next exit I ducked into a service station to get some coffee. As it turned out the NY or Pa. state police had closed the highway, and this place was jammed with people fighting to get to the lone pay phone to call friends or relatives. I ended up flopping in my sleeping bag in a truck stop, and I never did make that race. But to this day, I call my car the Subaru Motel: there's always a room available, and you can't beat the rates.
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