My boys love me.
Know how I know? Because
they took care of me when I needed it on this two-part exodus. (Thanks, guys! Come ski with me!)
Their wives love me, too, for reasons I don't really understand. You can pick your husband, but fathers-in-law come along as a by-product. At least both of them knew ahead of time that they'd be getting me in the bargain. And you know what? They married my boys anyway! I love those women as if they were my own flesh and blood. I am not kidding. (Come ski with me, girls!)
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The TT was stuffed to the gills. You can imagine, since I learned to pack on a submarine and still left four big boxes in Atlanta.
Trunk was full and tight. Leaned on the lid to get it closed.
Lowered the convertible top and packed the tonneau space so tightly the top couldn't be raised without significant unloading.
Tied a pair of lampshades to the passenger-side rollbar.
Stashed thin items behind each bucket seat.
Packed the passenger-side footwell to the bottom of the dashboard. Pallas might like a little walled-in area since we’d travel
with the top down … and she was definitely going to make the same sacrifice I was – because the driver-side footwell had clothes packed to the bottom of my legs.
The TT was stuffed to the gills.
When I climbed in to drive away, I could tell she was
sitting a little squat. When I
rounded the first corner, though, I knew she was going to handle just fine.
Which she did until some point between Greensboro and
Durham when the front tires started whining a little bit. “Oh yeah, I was gonna change those front tires a few weeks ago.”
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Why is this significant? One Thanksgiving … our family’s annual full-tilt get-together
… I was driving the same TT through rural Georgia at dusk on the Wednesday
before the Thursday holiday, when I got a flat. As I put on the doughnut spare tire, I distinctly remember
saying to myself, “Oh yeah, I was gonna change those front tires a few weeks after changing
the rears.” The doughnut didn’t
look really healthy either, but perhaps it would get me to Greensboro (Georgia
– yeah, I know there's also one in North Carolina) where I might find a tire place. Right. An open tire store on the day before Thanksgiving at 7 pm in rural Georgia. Sometimes I am so clueless.
The doughnut lasted about a mile. Through a series of happy coincidences, a tow truck was
headed my way and going to Greensboro.
No, he sure didn’t have a tire that would fit my “little sporty car with
them big-old rims,” and after five minutes of conversation we both realized I
was screwed.
Then he spoke up.
“You know, I used to race a dirt track car, and I think I have a tire
that will fit on your rim.”
“You would be my newest most-favorite pal; I’ll try anything marginally safe to get me to
Mom and Dad’s for Thanksgiving.”
We drove down a small country road, about 2 miles off the
Interstate to a corrugated steel building with the universally recognized
paint-on-plywood sign saying something like “Dukes of Hazzard Garage.”
[No, Mom, at no time was I scared. He was a decent fellow; but I
was watching everything like a sailor on shore leave.]
Sure enough he had a 17-inch tire, but it was easily 25%
taller than the over-priced low-profile sport tires on the other three wheels.
He rolled it over and leaned it against one of the back
tires. “It’ll be a little tall,
but it’ll fit the rim just fine.”
This he had determined from checking a tire catalog, and showing me the
tire dimensions. “It ain’t new,
but she’s got plenty of tread to go.
Dirt doesn’t wear ‘em out like asphalt. I’m thinking it should go on the back. Move one of them good back tires to the
front.”
"A little tall"
looked like at least five inches to me.
But it fit inside the fender, well, barely, and the catalog testified to
its ability to fit the rim. And
really? Was there any alternative?
So on went the used tire, and I think the car relished the
cultural contrast as much as I did: used Southern dirt track racing tire on a well-bred
German sport roadster.
A well-bred German sport roadster that was now tilting sharply from the much-too-high right rear tire.
But I digress.
That was several years ago and everything ended well, including my
patronage at Cardinal Tire for four new steel-belted radials. Happy to do it, too. Dad went with me; the guy knew him (of
course) so I got a good price; the tires went on immediately; and we were outta there in less than an
hour.
================================================================
Back to the present.
I was mentioning that the front tires began to whine. This noise I recognized, and
immediately dropped my speed to 65 mph.
After the two-flat adventure in Greensboro (Georgia – we've been over this!) I had spent a good bit of time reading
tire technical articles on the internet; the internet knows everything.
Turns out high-speed-rated tires make a whining noise when fast driving
generates more heat than they can dissipate, and the heat buildup starts to
break down the tires. Old tires ‘scream’
at lower speeds (like 85 mph at this point in the story) because they’re already breaking down due to age and mileage. Slowing to 65
stopped all unusual noise from the front fenders.
The internet knows everything, you just have to properly frame
the question. My longest-tenured
daughter-in-law had framed a good question for the internet: where are pet-friendly hotels near the midpoint of Hud's
drive? That turned out to be in
Newark (Delaware – yeah, I know there's one in New Jersey, sheesh!) which Pallas and I found around 11 pm.
This trip was subject to the same irritating drizzle as the
last, which started around sunset.
As previously mentioned, this required a stop to unpack two or three
armfuls of stuff in the tonneau space, raise the convertible top, and pack the stuff back inside; Pallas
standing beside the car, in the emergency lane of I-85 under a bridge in the middle of Virginia.
The drizzle had a benefit, though: I could drive faster than 65 mph, since the wet pavement and
nightfall made the road surface a lot cooler and helped my aging tires dissipate heat. This additional speed had to be balanced with the
understanding that old tires don’t have lots of remaining tread and are prone to hydroplaning at higher speeds.
We pulled into the raggediest hotel I’ve stayed in since I
got out of the Navy. No wonder it
was pet friendly! I was hungry, so
we wandered around, found a Taco Bell, and took our bean burritos to a parking lot next door
to the hotel: the parking lot for Tubby Raymond Field at Delaware Stadium, home
of the University of Delaware Blue Hens. (As of
this writing, they are 5-4, having lost the last two to Top-20 teams, placing
them in the middle of the Colonial Conference table; same conference as Georgia
State.) Capacity of 22,000, with more available seating for their headline sport of lacrosse. Interesting counterpoint to gigantic Southern football stadiums that seat 75,000 to 80,000.
Drove on the New Jersey Turnpike, minor goal for a traffic
geek, but constantly wondered about entrances and exits to Express Lanes,
with no indication if you’d miss an exit or obligate yourself to electronic
tolls if you entered. For the record,
the answers are “No,” and “No.”
The electronic toll answer may be different when the unidentified 50-mile
construction project is complete. Passed Rutgers and wished they were joining the ACC next season instead of Pittsburgh.
 |
| Pallas Athena finds New Jersey quite useful |
By the way, it is illegal for one to fuel their own car in
New Jersey. Yep, there are guys
hanging out to do the full service thing, except it isn’t really full
service. If you want your
windshield cleaned and your oil checked, you do that yourself. They just pump gas. Guess the typical Jersey Girl can’t
figure out how to operate the complicated gas pump handle.
The main emphasis for this trip is the iconic Brooklyn
Bridge. I wanted to drive across
it so badly that I was willing to add an hour or longer to my journey. It’s an attitude developed during my
Navy years at Pearl Harbor: “Hud, when is the next time you will be here? Then get out and do everything you can, because this opportunity may never return.”
You must drive across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in order to
get to the Brooklyn Bridge. Kinda
cool to hit those two significant civil engineering projects at the same
time. An amazing number of
potholes; Pallas objected by rising and re-settling often, but I chose to
ignore this evidence of our nation’s penchant to ‘defer’ needed maintenance on physical infrastructure. As a
civil engineer, I am appalled, but take the attitude of “You can pay me now, or
you can pay me later.”
Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge
(jiggles due to potholes,
piano jazz due to NYC public radio)
Found my way onto Park Avenue, and cruised up the Lower East
Side. Ran directly up to Grand
Central Station, and whipped around it close enough to touch the statue of
Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. A
nice drive beyond it, on a cloudy Sunday morning, along the landscaped
boulevard bordered by tidy, tony, tasteful, and astronomically expensive residential
buildings with their tidy, tony, tasteful residents walking in the early morning with their tidy, tony, tasteful dogs and their tidy, tony, tasteful kids.
Continued the tony tour past New Rochelle, White Plains,
Westchester, and Danbury. A
dramatic change in scenery from the Lower and Upper East Sides, while not
changing much in demographic. A
sociology lesson on wheels, if you will.
The Brooklyn and Verrazano Narrows Bridges were toll-free if
traveling in my direction, but I had already shelled out about $30 in tolls,
including a piece of the PA
Turnpike through the sketchy part of downtown Philadelphia, a bunch of the NJ Turnpike, a
couple of miscellaneous bridges, and $3.50 for about a half-mile in Delaware; $30 cash for a total distance of only 120 miles. I was getting a bit worried, since I
hadn’t counted on the steep cost of cash-only tolls. I’ve been to toll
plazas before with an inadequate amount of cash – it’s rather embarrassing –
and did not wish to repeat the experience.
This became a bit more of a concern as I headed towards the
last link of the trip: the Massachusetts Turnpike. (Mass Pike to locals, not “THE” Mass Pike.) Pallas and I stopped at a McDonald’s
just north of Hartford, a picnic in gorgeous sunshine on a very pleasant grassy area at the back edge of the shopping center parking lot. I unsuccessfully tried to divine the remaining tolls I’d have to pay for 65
miles of Mass Pike by staring at the road map. I had about $12 cash remaining, including
the quarters given in change at previous toll booths.
I ruminated on all this while unpacking the car, lowering the roof to better enjoy the sun,
and repacking. My scattered-personal-effects activity seriously impressed a number of other good citizens using the parking lot, but they must have decided against calling the sheriff.
“Twelve bucks should be enough,” I stated confidently to Miss Pallas. “Cost us about $30 to go a long way, under jurisdiction of
several toll authorities. What do
you think?”
Her response to
this question was an enigmatic expression that I interpreted as, “Did you eat all the fries?”
So we finished up Connecticut on I-84, and joined Mass
Pike/I-90 near Sturbridge.
Mass Pike uses new-school EZ-Pass electronic toll tags in metro Boston, and old-school paper tickets elsewhere. When you get on, you’re
issued a ticket. Specific tickets are
printed for each entrance, and the cost of travel to all the other toll
plazas is printed on the back.
When you get off, the toll collector knows where you got on (the specially-printed ticket, duh!), knows where you got off (here, duh!), and finds out how much you owe by
checking the fare table on the back of the ticket.
I asked the young man in
the booth how much it would cost to drive all the way to Boston. “One twenty five,” he said.
My lightning-quick mind compared 120 miles and
$30.00 for the morning versus 60 miles and $125.00 to Boston. I took a quick second of pause, and said, “You mean one
dollar and 25 cents?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the best deal I’ve gotten all day! Thanks!” The TT roared away, as
best it could with 500 pounds of human, dog, and miscellaneous household goods aboard.
Mass Pike was a gorgeous ride. Listened to a play-by-play of Boston University soccer
versus UNC for a while as we cruised through beautiful mountains. Traffic was miserable, however, and
completely unexpected.
Why were
all these people driving towards Boston on Sunday? Shouldn’t they be traveling tomorrow,
Labor Day?
I got no answer from
Pallas, this time her sleepy expression said, “It's a useless question with an irrelevant answer; the
traffic is here, doesn't matter why, just deal with it. I'm going to take a nap.”
You could tell when we got close to Boston, because the
pothole quotient started rising.
That and the “miles to Boston” signs showed successively smaller
numbers.
Paid my $1.25 at the Weston Toll Plaza and immediately entered a highway gulch similar to Atlanta’s Downtown Connector –
vertical retaining walls on both sides of the highway. This section of Mass Pike is about 20
feet below grade, about two stories. It intertwines with commuter train tracks with overhead
electric lines. Very Urban Vibe Going On Here.
Too much attention on driving and too little on
sightseeing for details. We flew by Fenway
Park and the Green Monstah, and entered a branch of the Big Dig, formally named
the Central Artery Tunnel Project.
About the time I figured out what was going on, we took the exit to I-93
Northbound, still underground, changing lanes furiously to make the exit and
then to avoid an exit-only less than a half-mile downstream.
We found our way to the house, and prepared for three weeks of
an empty apartment: a sleeping bag, backpacking mattress, no cooking
tools, and very little that was familiar.
“The best laid plans often go awry.”
Whatever. Pallas and I were
home, even though it didn’t remotely feel like it.
