(Panzer parked at the Refuge Farm gate, unscathed after 2,500 miles. Well, in this universe, anyway. Photo Socotra).
Life is grand, but I have to say this seems like a dream. Friday, I was reading the iPad on the screen porch listening to the traffic rumbling up and down White Street, shorts and flip-flops, wondering if I should put on a shirt and who the musical talent was going to be at The Green Parrot that night.
It is said that there is a concept in Physics in which there is an infinite number of universes, and each one the product of every determined and random act in each of them. This was a trip spurred by a typical reason for me, which involve the heart and the head. Miles permit distance for the former and concentration for the latter, which defers thought.
There is at least one alternate universe in which I am hanging upside down in the seat belt in the Panzer in the median of I-95, and perhaps others with variations on the fireball motif, sort of like the closing ceremonies to the Sochi Olympics.
Call me a road asshole, and I will cheerfully agree, but Dad beat professionalism into his kids for the way we behave behind the wheel, and he taught us the Naval Aviation method of managing the cockpit work-load.
I keep statistics on these longer drives across America, and this one was respectable. Total over something right around 2,500 miles. Average speed yesterday was 73 MPH, including pit stops, a little over 21 MPG for 93 octane blend, and ten hours and seventeen minutes elapsed time for not quite 700 miles. Three pit stops. Nearly 500 miles the day before that, which included a late start and the 126 miles of the two-lane Zen experience of the Overseas Highway. Zero citations.
I saw winter’s gray flank at Fort Pierce, and drove into it. The temperatures have been mild up North, but it is not over here. I am looking at the snow on the front yard at Refuge Farm. I hurt all over. I am very glad I came to the farm on the way home and did not approach the Imperial City on I-95 at the end of the weekend. I slept hard and deep and am still a little foggy.
Yesterday was pure interstate, starting at first light, a little before seven, Jacksonville time. Weather fair, track fast, and Daytona, site of the 500 race, was well in the rearview, a complication for which I was blissfully unaware.
Sunday morning is a good time for rapid transit- Jax was still asleep, and Savannah, when the wheels of the Panzer rolled through its environs, was at Church.
The biggest threat at that hour is bored cops looking for revenue, and the idiot in the van with the New York plates generously decided to provide some as he blew past me crossing the Georgia line. I thought he was going to lose some good speed-of-advance, sitting there waiting for the Florida Patrol to issue the citation.
I was working on my scan- three mirrors and rate of closure on traffic ahead. Miami has some fast movers- that is a challenging town, with road hazards including the elderly, the impatient and the high-flyers. Mirror, rearview, mirror, look ahead as far as you see, adjust speed, check Garmen Nav, instrument panel, repeat, repeat repeat repeat repeat.
Much of I-95 in Florida and Georgia is three lanes both ways (or under construction to become so) which does not make things safer; rather, it adds to the complexity and urgency of The Scan, since in addition to identifying the traffic ahead for a mile, the overtakers can be moving very fast in the blind spot, and advancing to the center lane from the far right just where you cannot see them, increasing the risk of merging into them as you clear the left lane for those with less fear of the police.
Naturally, the nearer to urban areas the more loony-tunes there are.
Back in the days of the outer air defense, we used to call the incoming threat aircraft “Leakers,” since they broke the Barrier Combat Air patrol. I had no wingman on this journey, though there were other drivers with out of state plates clearly heading the same way I was, and some were fairly talented drivers I could use as a blocking force, to display their marginally higher speeds to the radar of the cops at the trap sites.
I had been bouncing between 77-81 MPH most of the time, with the Garmen Nav system providing real-time speed limit advisories. I only had the one “leaker,” that was moving so fast that he got inside my scan pattern.
Or maybe it was a moment of inattention- but for me, scan always precedes lane change and blinker initiation, three blinks preferred. I am never surprised, or at least not in most of the universes.
I-95 was two lanes at that point, and traffic had become that I-95 congestion- trucks moving at or below the speed limit, four-wheelers the same, and the left lane congested getting past the trucks. It required constant adjustment and fiddling with the cruise-control, which allowed me to rest the bad legs and drive with my hands.
It pride myself on The Scan, and situational awareness of everything that is happening around the Panzer at any given moment, and the status of all onboard systems. I was approaching Fayetteville, just past the Fort Bragg-Pope Air Force Base exit; should be Joint Base Bragg-Pope these days- maybe they don’t have enough money to change the signs yet.
I might have been thinking of that and I might have been contemplating the consequences of the apparent change of government in Ukraine, but I swear my scan was automatic at that point. I had let one more aggressive F-150 pick up get by- he had demonstrated a predilection for riding my bumper and I dislike that and intended to lose him by adjusting the speed down a knot or two.
Scan, blinker initiation, mirror check and commence turning the wheel to initiate lane change and then there was something big that had been obscured by traffic closing VERY FUCKING FAST.
I swerved back to my right as the big thing went by too fast to register and image except black paint and camping gear lashed to the rear. It cut between the F-150 and the red sedan I had been about to pass, and he had another leaker concealed on his bumper that filled my rearview completely.
If there is one thing about V-8 engines I appreciate it is instant response, from the muscle cars of long ago to the magnificent CLK-500 Hubrismobile. It would have been the way out of this one, the driver of the sedan hitting his brakes, was to tromp on the gas and cycle around him. Even with turbo, the V-6 Panzer just doesn’t have it, and waiting for the engine to spool up was the longest two seconds of my worthless life.
If there is anyone from the Department of Transportation reading this, or if you know someone there, a quick tip to pass along: your new MPG restrictions are going to get a lot of people killed. This one could have been really bad, and maybe it was in the parallel universes.
I have no idea where the leaker thought he was going to go- I had been scoping the mile ahead and there was no place to advance except through smooth and polite maneuvering in the traffic. But the rules of professional conduct were clearly suspended and it was my fault for not having a more rapid scan rate to deal with someone determined to travel erratically and well above the speed range gate.
When my synapses returned to a normal rate of fire, I tried to analyze the situation. I had been traveling about 77 mph- an accommodation to traffic flow, vehicle separation and law enforcement. To break inside my scan rate pattern for overtakers, he must have been moving at least 10-15 miles above the average speed in which traffic was flowing- or somewhere around a hundred mph. That is enough to guarantee a call from the County Mounties on a clear stretch of super-slab, much less in noon-time Sunday traffic.
Fascinating, once my pulse was starting to come back down. Up ahead, I could see him continuing to weave through traffic, driving very fast up the gap behind the tractor-trailers and then swerving in to cut off the traffic obediently waiting to creep past. I could see the flash of blue from the bright blue tarp, and the flash of brake lights, and I waited for the accident but saw nothing.
I was rattled. I never get surprised on the road, but there I was, bagged completely by someone operating so far outside the normal traffic regime that it rendered The Scan completely ineffective.
Approaching Richmond, the Garmin wanted me to take the bypass east (when I wanted to arc west) and then up to Fredericksburg and I demurred. I took 288 to the northwest and Charlottesville, and then the two-lane 522 the last fifty miles up to rural Culpeper.
It is lovely rolling country- little pockets of 35 and 45 MPH turns, and snow still left in the shadows. It still covered most of the front lawn when I eventually pulled into the farm, a few minutes later than I would have with another hour on I-95.
The snow on the front lawn will take care of itself, though they are talking about a maybe last-gasp of Polar Vortex next week. I took the bags in to do the laundry and mix a very stiff drink. I cut the little Key Lime that Marlow gave me in half, and used it to cut the rich vodka and tonic mix. I was there yesterday, I thought.
I scanned the great room of the farmhouse. Why the hell am I here? And which universe am I in?
(There is really nothing like a fresh Key Lime, in this universe, anyway. Thanks, Marlow.)
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303