{"id":2907,"date":"2012-04-22T15:26:56","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T15:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/?p=2907"},"modified":"2012-04-22T15:26:56","modified_gmt":"2012-04-22T15:26:56","slug":"call-me-ishmael","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/call-me-ishmael\/","title":{"rendered":"Call Me Ishmael"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\n(CAPT Ahab\u2019s good ship Pequod. Painting by J Dillon).<\/p>\n

I have a lot of scrambling to do today to get on the road to the Little Village By the Bay. There is that book I am supposed to be editing, and now that the Annual Meeting of the Professionals is over, I am on the hook to deliver the copy for the Spring-Summer issue to the lay out people.<\/p>\n

I have to be somewhere else tomorrow, a long way down the concrete alley that leads to the Wolverine State, and have resigned myself to a day at the office trying to get things unscrambled. As part of girding my loins for travel, I have decided to call myself \u201cIshmael\u201d for this voyage.<\/p>\n

You know the story, and I won\u2019t belabor the parallels with Herman Melville\u2019s Moby Dick. I do not expect to meet the Great White Whale on this trip, I will, however, keep my eyes peeled for the Great White Cruiser of the Ogemaw County speed trap.<\/p>\n

Hell, I may be driving a Great Whale. In Moby Dick, Ishmael is setting out from New Bedford in hunt of the great sea mammals. I am setting out as a mammal myself onto the great concrete river. For Ishmael, it begins on a dark-and-stormy night at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford. You will note that the Pennsylvania Turnpike runs through Bedford, PA- and it will take me to the great state surrounded by all the fresh water in the world,.<\/p>\n

There is a cautionary tale in the first chapter of Melville\u2019s masterwork: As was the custom of the day, Ishmael agrees to share a bed with an absent stranger. When his bunk-mate returns to the Inn, he is revealed as a heavily tattooed harpooner named Queequeg.<\/p>\n

Both are naturally alarmed, but it works out OK, I guess, although there are plenty of pages to turn before Ahab meets his fate- and I think I only read the Classic Comics version. Nonetheless, I am going to be on alert at the Super Eight, just in case. Not that there is anything wrong with it, of course.<\/p>\n

Islmael\u2019s ship was the Pequod, which in this tortured extended metaphor would be the likely name for the vehicle I am going to flog across the waves of the Interstate. In the book, of course, the voyage of the Pequod pivots on a foggy Christmas day, the last holiday I saw the parents alive, Ishmael sights pots dark figures in the mist, which I find evocative of the fog that would roll in over us all over the next five days.<\/p>\n

The Hertz people were kind enough to set aside an Infiniti FX35 Cross-over SUV for my exclusive use for the trip. I tried to get another Caddie- the SRX I rented last year was a blast to drive, but they were sold out. Besides, I have already written a review of that 1,900 miles behind the wheel. I don\u2019t think I figured out the bells-and-whistles until I was approaching Rockville on the way home.<\/p>\n

What attracted me to this version of an automotive Pequod was the size of the cargo payload. I have no idea if there is anything I want to bring back, but there will certainly be a ton of crap to haul to the dump, or to Goodwill, or to storage. I am steeling myself to let stuff go. We will see how well I do on that.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Generic 2012 Infiniti FX35 at rest. I specified a big white one. Photo T. W. Benjamin.)<\/p>\n

The FX35 seems to have some possibilities. I curled up the the Car and Driver review before I mashed the button to reserve this precise vehicle. They say: \u201cIt looks brawny… in the bulging, muscular fashion of a Dodge Viper rather than the square-shouldered idiom of a Caterpillar tractor. Moreover, its greenhouse is tidy, rakish, and sleek, and this particular FX35 didn’t even have four-wheel drive. Instead, it funneled every bit of its 280 horsepower to its rear tires.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think the snow is done for the year. Hope so, anyway. The last few trips have mandated All Wheel Drive. But I think Spring might have arrived in the Northland. It is supposed to be 53 up there tomorrow. Plus, it rolls pretty well:<\/p>\n

Zero to 120 mph: 39.1 sec
\nStreet start, 5-60 mph: 7.2 sec
\nStanding 1\/4-mile: 15.5 sec @ 91 mph
\nTop speed (drag limited): 137 mph
\nMy great thanks in advance to Mr. Hertz for letting me explore the possibilities.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(DOHC 24-valve V-6, aluminum block 213 CU engine. Aluminum heads, Nissan engine-control system with port fuel injection- and probably starboard, too. It generates 280 Brake horsepower at 6,200 RPM. We will see how it does in Ogemaw against the Great White Cruiser. Photo T. W. Benjamin.)<\/p>\n

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(CAPT Ahab\u2019s good ship Pequod. Painting by J Dillon). I have a lot of scrambling to do today to get on the road to the Little Village By the Bay. There is that book I am supposed to be editing, and now that the Annual Meeting of the Professionals is over, I am on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2911,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907\/revisions\/2911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}