Tuesday night I drove 200+ miles from a town 25 miles north of Manhattan to my house in Boston. I usually fly everywhere but Monday night I was in Hartford and the place in NY was only about 100 or so miles from Hartford. So I decided to drive there from Hartford and after my meeting got out on Tuesday at 6PM I would drive home. Why not? I could always use a good road trip to clear my mind.
For just about everyone, this post will mean nothing. But for me, I can read this years from now and memories of that day will come flooding back like a picture coming into focus. Once again, it's all about me.
The first road I got on was the Saw Mill Parkway. The SMP is like a race track except you have cars coming to a complete stop every couple of miles for an exit that's like a driveway on the side of a highway. The two lane highway...
The first road I got on was the Saw Mill Parkway. The SMP is like a race track except you have cars coming to a complete stop every couple of miles for an exit that’s like a driveway on the side of a highway. The two lane highway is pretty narrow and has more turns than a mystery novel. It was not a fun way to start my drive home. I knew that the faster I drove the faster I got home so I gunned it, keeping within my own personal limit to avoid getting a ticket. In this case, around 80 miles an hour.
After the Saw Mill I got on to 684, a cruise ship compared to the canoe that was the SMP. Right away it opened up into like 4 lanes and I had plenty of room and it was straight. Beautiful. I had bought a bag of peanut M&Ms so I cracked those delights out, turned on NY sports radio and sat back.
After about 20 miles or so, it was time to get on the connector road that is sort of a no man’s land kind of highway. Route 84. It takes a diagonal cut through Connecticut and puts me on the Mass Pike for the final sprint home. The thing about 84 is that for the first 60 miles it’s a great drive. It passes through the rolling hills of Connecticut and makes for a gentle ride. Now, at this point I started to get annoyed with AM radio. I was starting to lose the NY stations and I was getting frustrated that the stations would fade after a few miles. So I turned on FM and started surfing.
I immediately found two stations close together that played great music. Funny how near a small town like Waterbury you can find better music than most stations in NY or Boston.
Then I found myself doing what I love to do when driving by myself – I started to drift. Mentally. Not the car. I would put on a song that normally I would never listen to, like Leonard Skynard, and for a little while listening to the surprisingly good lyrics. Funny thing about music. I love all kinds of music and it’s really a simple thing. You get someone who can write some interesting words, you put together a few people who can play decent enough instruments, add a singer who can hold a note and if all three click, you have a winner. It’s really not that hard. Unfortunately I can’t play any instruments, can’t sing and don’t have a long enough attention span to write lyrics. But others can.
So as I started listening to these road trip songs, and it seemed like that DJs were putting them on just for me, knowing that I had a long drive ahead, and I would look down at the clock and 7:08 would turn into 7:43 in seconds. It was like these songs, coupled with a day-end tiredness, would create some kind of time machine in the car.
Then I entered a weird part of 84 – Hartford. I said that 84 was nice, but then you get to Hartford and it suddenly hits turbulence. Exits appear randomly on the left and right side. Signs to continue on 84 are all over the place. You have all these other roads attaching themselves to 84. You go on and under huge cement overpasses that seem to create a random maze of highway. You get back into this curvy road that causes white knuckles and red break lights. It’s awful And then just as fast as it appears you are back on this wide open road surrounded by hills and fading light. Strange.
So after a couple of hours of driving I finally hit my final speed track – The Mass Pike. Or Route 90. I pick it up at a spot where I have about an hour left in my trek. And the Mass Pike, well, in a single word, sucks. There is construction and cars going slow in the left lane and tractor trailers and jersey barriers. I find it extremely stressful. But I also start to get into WEEI range and I can listen to my favorite best sports friend, Mike Adams. He hates the Yankees as much as I hate the Red Sox, he hates Yankee players as much as I hate Red Sox players and I love listening to him. He has a great self deprecating way of not sounding like a jerk when he puts down my favorite sports team.
About 45 minutes from home I realized I had to go to the bathroom, number one. But I am so impatient that I didn’t want to stop, I just wanted to get home. So I told myself I could hold it, it’s only 45 minutes after all, think about how good it will feel when I do finally take a pee.
But then I thought “Ok, but what happens if there is an accident and they shut the road down and you have to sit at a stand still until the wreckers clear the crumpled cars? What then?”
I would pee into an empty water bottle. That’s what then. But what if I pee more than 16.9 fluid ounces? What if I am going strong and realize I have more mellow yellow than this little plastic bottle will hold. I have no idea in the world how much pee I make. No idea at all. For all I know I produce half a gallon, or half a pint.
Anyway, I cruised along on the Mass Pike at a safe clip, watching bad drivers, enviously glancing at the rest stops and all the people getting out using the bathrooms, and made it to 95.
A quick and crazy road race on 128/95 south to my exit and I was home free.
Then, about 3 miles from my house, I got stuck behind a very slow moving minivan on Canton Ave. It was like painting an entire house and running out of paint with about a foot of wood left. I had made great time, was going to break a speed drive record in fact, and here I was about to be slowed down by a beat-up green Windstar. Please, for the love of all that is good, SPEED IT THE #*&% UP.
They did not speed it up but I made it home anyway.
I turned the key of my empty house, Patti and the kids were away, breathed in the smell of home, kicked the cat and walked straight to the bathroom. And you know what, it did feel pretty good.
It was fairly late so I watched some TV, had a beer and went to bed. When I am flying I am always occupying my mind. I read the paper, read magazines, read papers for work, I work on my computer, I talk to people. But in the car I am forced to collect my thoughts, think things through and empty myself of the desire to work. I am forced to idle. In a car alone I am made to do nothing at all but listen to music and think, relax and focus on one thing – driving safely. I found myself pretty relaxed. Maybe this driving thing isn’t so bad. I won’t get Platinum on the Mass Pike like Delta is about to make me, but who cares. Life isn’t a game of collecting frequent flyers points.
It isn’t, right?
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