(Breezewood, PA, the village of Motels. Photo Courtesy Automatic7).
The roads that connect North and South are always filled with adventure and the possibility of mischance. A real delight sometimes, and sometimes agony. This trip had both.
Approaching the Capital yesterday, I realized suddenly how this all works. I got a palpable sense of the importance- or self importance- of the place. It is physical, not philosophical.
I happened to drive the 849 miles through the little resort towns of Harbor Springs and Petoskey- thoroughly human scale, and in perspective from the vastness of all that fresh wonderful water on the limitless horizon. I thought about that, driving up the bluff that would soon conceal the view of the Bay. I glanced in the side mirror at the light at the top of the rise to see the last sliver of blue, and then snapped my gaze Forward, like the President’s unfortunate and truthful campaign slogan.
There was nothing to speak of in the rest of the journey except the endless concrete of the highways. I-75 is free-for-all, passing through transit and distribution centers for the thin veneer of human settlement. Then Saginaw, from whence a down-at-the-heels Paul Simon once hitch-hiked, and Midland and Bay City and sorry Flint.
The sprawl of Detroit posed no barrier to transit. It was not a friendly old ghost, as Motor City rocker Bob Seger once termed Manhattan- but a ghost nonetheless. I seemed to “float right through.”
Toledo and Cleveland? Not much happening. The low sandy soil of Ohio rolled by- the Spring construction season is in motion, but there was not enough traffic to slow me down. The FX35 was so full of crap that I could not see out the back window, so I gave extra room to the vehicles I overtook before obediently sliding back into the right hand lane.
I had set Youngstown as a goal for the day’s drive. I was not going to die over this trip, and hard experience has taught me that the PA turnpike (America’s First Superhighway!”) snaking up the mountains is nothing to be attempt fatigued and in darkness. The signs for the last Exit in Ohio slid by still in full daylight, and I adjusted to Cranberry, an interchange city north of Pittsburgh, as the place to stay over night.
Still daylight as Cranberry appeared on the beam of the rental car, and I pushed on to Butler Valley before getting off the Turnpike.
There was a Quality Inn, which wasn’t, but I got a handicapped room on the first floor where I could keep on eye on the fully-laden car. I poured a stiff whiskey and watched the dusk settle in, 600 miles under the keel of the Infinity for the day. I limped next door to the ParkNEat restaurant, where I placed a take-out order for a large chef’s salad.
“Is this a typo?” I asked Brittany the waitress. “It says it comes with fries on it.”
“You are not from around here, are you?” she responded with a merry smile. “It is a Pittsburgh thing. They put fries on everything.”
I allowed as how I was not from around there, but rather from her nation’s capital, and was interested in checking it out.
I left the other half for breakfast, did some calculations on when I would be likely to arrive in Washington, and collapsed on the bed, lights out, until after five. I rose, answered another angry note from my sibling with something sarcastic and drove off into the darkness of the pre-dawn.
My point about America- small town people who hump furniture and take day-jobs helping to close down houses and put fries on their salads- is that there is reality there and reality elsewhere. Once past the approaches to Pittsburgh, there was only the blip of Johnstown (of flood fame) and some valley towns that slumbered on the high plateau where I had seen the last snow of winter only a week ago.
Off the Turnpike at Breezewood, the Village of Motels, a crossroads town that exists only because of the highway and the route south to the Carolinas. Then down the big hill toward Maryland. The free highway was blissfully empty heading down to Hagerstown, and I thought I might be enough behind the rush hour toward DC that I might cruise right into town.
Not possible. The Capital is protected by a ring of steel and plastic, a mobile protective moat of automobiles. At Willow last night I opined that it was analogous to the process of the spermatozoa approaching the Ova- millions of individual strivers all targeting the prize, all headed with relentless self-importance and oblivious to what is going on around them in their urgency.
According to the trip advisory on the Hertz Never Lost navigation system, there were 35 miles to go to Big Pink when I arrived in gridlock on I-270, the “High Tech Corridor” dedicated to former Maryland Senator Charles “Chuck” Mathias- I remember him, vaguely, and used to work with his son at Lucent. Sitting in traffic, bladder aching from the pressure of the Vente Starbucks coffee I bought at the service plaza west of Pittsburgh, I realized that Government- me included- was part of the problem.
I bailed out on the George Washington parkway and traffic dematerialized. Riding the last twelve miles down the falls of the Potomac, I realized it was just about over. Except for gassing the rental car, unloading all the crap into the Bluesmobile and actually getting it back to the airport and taking a cab back home and then sitting blankly on my balcony in the clothes that did not suit my current climate.
Home again. Mission Complete, or at least MC, which is what I would put in the box of the government travel claim.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com