As I write this, I am sitting naked on a deck outside Penthouse K, on the twenty-first floor, with my back to midtown Manhattan. It's nice to be here, and it's nice to turn your back on the North American City of Cities. It can wait. I'll tell you though, I can feel all of the office buildings reading over my shoulder, so it would probably be wise to reserve my criticism for a less public place.
So, today was the first day of what promises to be a long and fairly --- well, meditative --- trip. I had company for the first leg of my trip, as my sister Alice drove with me from Maine down to New York City, where she lives and where she'll stay, at least for the next year or so. The trip was an accelerated one, as she had to get back by 7:00 or suffer the wrath of the landlord, so our stops were short and our legs were long.
Nevertheless, it was a pretty drive; from Blue Hill up 15 to Bucksport, across 3 to Augusta, and then plunging down 95 to New York. The sky went through many lovely shades of gray. Honestly, there's not much to say about that leg of the trip; I've done it so many times I'm pretty much on autopilot.
I don't feel all that tired, either, which is nice because frankly the next few days will involve a good deal more driving; it's 460 miles (as I measured it) from Blue Hill to NYC, and if I want to make it to Houston on Thursday (and I don't have much hope of getting there earlier), I'll have to do a good deal more than 400 miles a day. On the motorcycle, five hundred is a damn long day. In a car, I'm hoping to make days nearer to seven or eight hundred. Of course, Lachlan once drove on his motorcycle from Aspen to Princeton in two days, but then he's a sick sick lad. And getting sicker, I think.
It's midnight, pretty much on the dot, and I'm going to hit the hay. Brick. Tile. Whatever.
Tuesday's night finds me in somewhat less posh circumstances than Monday's. I'm in a Sleep Inn, just east of Harrisburg, PA. You might suggest that 150 miles is less than phenomenal for my first day of solo driving, and you'd be right, except that in fact I didn't even leave New York until after dinner. That's the thing about New York; when you leave, you miss things. In my case, breakfast, lunch, and dinner dates with college friends.
So, I'm finally on the road, in a manner of speaking, and the car seems to be running all right, with a few exceptions. The most notable of these is the clutch, which continues to act up; I've adopted the interim solution of never ever holding the clutch open for more than half a second. When coming to a stop, I just shift into neutral. The only time when this is difficult is while maneuvering in parking lots. I dropped the car off at a lot in lower Manhattan today, and watched for a minute or two while the attendant tried to get the car into a parking spot, mangling the gearbox horribly. I relieved him of the keys, and parked it myself. He was also relieved.
Aside from this, though, the car and I are getting along fine; I've discovered that in fifth gear, 100 mph corresponds to about 4K on the tach, a very reachable mark. I haven't yet gone that fast, but the car feels fairly stable. In fact, if I'm having one problem in this regard, it's probably that I'm running at RPMs which are too low. I should just cane it harder. Well, maybe not. Also, the catalytic converter has developed a pretty sizeable exhaust (and noise) leak. Oh well.
Everyone seems to say the following two things about Saabs: First, that they're wonderful little cars, and second, that they break all the time. This is not reassuring.
Tomorrow I hope to get --- through? --- Virginia.
Disaster! As we unpacked the dinnner supplies from the sled tonight, Elizabeth misbuckled the sled dogs, and three of them escaped! In an emergency vote, the rest of us decided that Elizabeth should take the place of the missing dogs, and help to pull the sled. Elizabeth disagreed, and finally we were forced to kill and eat her. A shame.
No, no, nothing like that, but trouble all the same. At about four this afternoon, while driving slowly through road work, I noticed a pronounced rolling motion in the car. This scared the bejeezus out of me, and I pulled over in ???ville to get it checked out. I assumed that it was an alignment problem, but a set of helpful mechanics informed me that in fact my rear left tire was separating. In fact, the lump was extremely pronounced; about the length and thickness of a fish. Okay, so fish come in lots of sizes. About ten inches long, two inches wide, and one inch thick. Quite a lump.
Unfortunately, they didn't have the tire I needed. They told me that they could get such a tire, but that it might be Thursday afternoon before I was rolling again, so I decided to wallow my way southward, and hope to find a well-sized tire.
After a whole bunch of failures, I got a hit, and here I am at the Bristol Wal-Mart, at 7:35 pm. In fact, they didn't have the right size of tire either, but they do have another which we both agree will fit pretty well. In fact, it's a bit larger, so now I'll have that rakish tilt that I always wanted. Actually, I don't think the difference will be noticeable at all.
On the other hand, they close at 8:00, and I am getting a bit nervous.
As a funny side note, I've decided there is some kind of curse involving the state of Virginia and automotive travel; the point where I started having trouble today is just south of the rest stop where Matthew and I broke down last year, on the way from Princeton to Texas. Of course, Virginia is a very long stretch of the trip: about 320 miles, out of 1600 total. I believe that's the longest single-state stretch of road between NYC and Houston, and I'll be glad to say goodbye to it tonight.
I'm still not sure how far I'll get tonight; I had originally planned to make it into Alabama, but that doesn't sound like much fun right now. I've gone about 400 miles total tonight, and (God willing) I'll be back on the road pretty soon, but I don't want to be driving at midnight, so I may wind up in Knoxville. Perhaps I can call ahead for reservations. Hmmm... in retrospect, I should have picked up a AAA lodging guide while I was there in New York getting maps. Oh well.
Oops. Well, I'm back in Houston. The last day of my trip was completely terrifying: I drove 1100 miles, from Bristol, VA, all the way back home. I got in at 3:30 AM. The drive itself was mercifully uneventful, and I was really really glad that I'd taken the time in the parking lot of Wal-Mart to install a new car stereo, even if it did take TWO HOURS rather than the ten seconds suggested by the moron who sold it to me. Well, he did sell it to me; perhaps he was merely being deceitful, and not stupid.
In summary: Tennessee was pretty, Alabama was hot, Mississippi was underpopulated and lonely, Louisiana was dark and filled (FILLED) with mosquitos (after getting about a foot of rain), and Texas was ... well, I think I slept through that part of the trip. Actually, just after crossing into Texas, I did pull over in a rest stop and got about fourteen and a half winks in a sticky back-seat nap. Ugh.
| John Clements / gruesome_incident@brinckerhoff.org |
| last modified 10/1/98; 1:01:40 PM |