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When I say I had 'made' the drive from New England to Colorado
before, I'm just noting that I had ridden in the back seat of a car.
Nothing prepares you for your first multiple day drive alone except
doing it. The longest drive I had done before driving to Colorado
was an hour and a half trip to the family grocery chain's new, second
branch store. And that was a forty-five minute drive one way, help
unload the truck, walk around the new store for a couple of minutes
admiring it, then do another forty-five minute drive back. For my
trip to Colorado, I was to drive around two thousand miles on a route
I'd never taken before.
While I had a tape deck installed in the car and over ten hours of
albums taped to listen to, I got through the first few hours of the
drive silently. I don't even know how often I stopped for gas, I
suspect I only did so when the tank was nearly empty or when I needed
to reacquaint myself with the maps. So maybe I stopped for gas
thrice a day with a fourth stop as needed for other stuff. As the
car didn't have cruise control, that was still an upper crust sort
of option for the mid-nineteen seventies when the car was made,
my right foot began to get tired of ceaselessly pressing down on the
gas peddle. I tried using my left foot for a bit, but while reaching
the brake with it wasn't an issue, reaching the gas pedal,
comfortably, was. After just shy of eight hours from the time I left
my family home, I had gotten through the center of New York state and
entered North Central Pennsylvania. Given my abbreviated sleep of
the previous night, I was done driving and found a hotel off the
highway and checked in by two thirty in the afternoon. Exhausted, I
used the bathroom, then fell onto the bed and was out for the next
twelve hours.
When I awoke and got cleaned up I realized I needed to think this
through a bit better. Rummaging through the car, I found the long
handled ice scraper for the windshield; I suspected I could use this
on the highway, when I didn't have to worry about shifting gears, to
hold down the gas pedal with my right hand from time to time to give
my foot a break. Also, I had gone through three hours of my tapes
the previous day and realized I would need to pace myself so I
wouldn't just end up playing the same tapes over and over again
during the drive. I concluded I would use the radio from time to
time, but would save the tapes for the times I was struggling to pay
attention and a stream of loud unbroken music would keep me from
making a mistake, or dosing off! Checking
out that first morning I found that I could have left the key behind
in the room and just locked the door behind me as I had paid cash
upon check-in. This was the tactic I used for the rest of my nights.
Actually getting on the road an hour
or more earlier than the previous day, I was on my way to link-up
with the original AAA
planned route and join Interstate 70. My time thinking things
through before I got on the road really helped. While traffic was
heavier than the day before, this actually kept me more alert and the
first time I used the long handled window scrapper for the gas pedal,
I discovered that the end near me fit perfectly in a grove of the
center emergency brake lever housing, allowing me to not only give my
foot a rest, but also my hand. Technically
not ideal, but I was more
relieved than worried at the time doing this. The car was holding up
well and while disappointed that I had only gotten through a few
states the day before, I was through to just the other side of the
Indiana and Illinois border before I decided it was time to end my
second day on the road. All and all I was happier with this day's
driving and looked forward to day three. I've since
learned looking forward to anything often leads to disappointment.
The third driving day started off
well, and I was across the Mississippi river and through Saint Louis
before lunch. I had learned that the best time to use the window
scraper 'cruise control' was on the stretches between the major
cities, then use my foot for the more varying conditions driving
through them. As I had gotten through two and a half states,
roughly, each day of the trip so far my goal was to get through
another two and a half for this day... Forgetting that the
states get wider as you go west.
My scariest moment was when nearing Kansas City as there was road
work taking place significantly east of the city and traffic abruptly
stopped to a crawl. This caught me by surprise and I put my foot on
the brake, but then remembered the window scraper holding down the
gas pedal. Releasing that made the car slow down much more quickly
and this was when I discovered that I had placed a weighty box of
something just above the driver's head rest and it slid forward
pushing my head to the windshield. Fortunately I finished the
maneuver of: Taking the scraper off the gas pedal, braking to stop
before hitting the car in front of me, and pushing back with all my
neck strength against the box while keeping my eyes on the road. I
drove more carefully through the rest of the city's road construction
until I was on the west side, then pulled off to stretch, gas-up, and
rearrange the boxes behind my seat so I wouldn't have to worry about
it again.
This would have been a good time to
figure out where I wanted to stay for the night, but as I was feeling
'good enough' and it was only the middle of the afternoon, I felt I
could go further before I pulled-off for the night. In retrospect,
Topeka -- Yes, Topeka!
-- should have been the
place I stopped off at.
But, with the time change, I realized it wasn't even dinner time yet
and kept on driving. After all there were exits with hotels and
motels every tens of miles so far on the trip.
This was when I learned that not
only did the states get wider as one drove out west, the towns became
much more sparse... Not only
did the towns get more sparse, but there were no longer hotels and
motels visibly at the handful of exits along the way.
After two thirds of driving through Kansas, with Interstate 70
nothing more than a straight line through a never ending corn field,
my car started to weave back and forth a bit. I would compensate for
this using the steering wheel for the next few miles, but it just got
worse. Finally I stopped on the shoulder of the highway and got out
to discover what was going on with the car. It turned out the rear
driver side wheel was nearly flat. Then I remembered the nail I
had seen in the tire the night before I left New England.
Perhaps I should have been checking on the tire once or twice during
the course of the drive. Either way it didn't matter now as I needed
to change it.
The spare tire mounted underneath the car made that easy to reach,
but the tire jack was in the back of my import station wagon and the
back of it was loaded with all my stuff. Still, I knew where to find
it and was able to transfer some stuff to the passenger seat rather
than leaving it out on the ground as semis swooped passed with a gust
of wind each time. I finally got the jack out and then realized I'd
have to kneel on the driver side of the car to jack it up as cars
zipped by. I was pretty brave and could have been right at the edge
of the highway and kept my eye on the coming traffic and not been
affected, but to jack-up the car I was placing myself back first to
the lane of traffic and having to trust the passing drivers not to
drift ever so slightly out of their lane and into the shoulder and
me. I soon got the shakes, but knew I didn't have time to get over
it as the sky was just starting to turn amber before the coming
sunset. Car jacked up and tire off, with various moments to move to
the far side of the car and wait when I heard the sound of semis
approaching, I was ready to get the spare tire from under the car and
soon got it free... I realized it was virtually flat itself.
I'd like to take this moment as a public service to tell everyone
to please check the tire pressure of your spare, at least once a
year.
My shakes were soon joined with
despair as this was before the age of mobile phones and I was in the
middle of nowhere after driving past hundreds of miles of never
ending corn fields. I struggled to fight them off and clear my mind
enough to think. I guessed that the spare tire's softness was from a
very slow leak that had taken place over the six years since my
father had bought the car. Whereas the leak of the rear driver's
side tire had been pretty fast, in comparison.
So I concluded I was still better off using the spare than putting
the other tire back on. Still, once the spare was bolted down and I
had the other tire hung under the car in its place, my heart sank as
I lowered the jack and, with the descending car, the rim of the spare
tire got closer and closer to the pavement. But then it held with,
maybe ten pounds of pressure in it?
I'd like to take this moment as a public service to tell everyone
to please keep a tire pressure gauge in your car. You never know
when you may need it.
With the change of tire completed, I now found it was harder to
control my case of the shakes as I no longer had something to focus
on. I got back into the driver's seat and let it support me and hold
me as I just concentrated on starting the car and getting back on the
road. Once in the lane, I kept to the minimum speed allowed as I
wasn't sure how much I could trust the spare tire, yet. I
scrutinized every new exit for any sign of a service station.
Nowadays Hays, Kansas, has become the stop for all those crossing
Kansas and needing a place to stay over night. But in Nineteen
Eighty-Three it wasn't, or at least not as obviously so
as it is now. I think I drove for shy of an hour before I found a
service station just off the highway and pulled in to fill-up the
spare tire to a reasonable pressure. But it was nearing seven
o'clock local time and the single guy at the station counting the
money before closing for the day wasn't interested in a late comer.
But he had made the mistake of leaving his garage door open and I
entered though it and asked for his help. To get me out of his face,
he pointed me to where the air hose was in the maintenance section of
the garage. I pulled my car up and then tried to use it, but he had
apparently already turned off the compressor motor and all I could do
was equalize what little air was left in the compressor tank with
what little air was in my tire. Perhaps this brought my tire up to
eighteen pounds of pressure...?
Had there been a hotel or motel
apparent at this exit, I would have stayed the night, then filled up
my tire to the proper level the next morning. But there wasn't and I
was back on the highway and soon reaching the border of Colorado. It
occurred to me that I had gained another hour crossing the border and
it was once again before seven o'clock. I determined that I would go
all the way to mom's place before turning in for the night. After
all, it was only two-fifths of a state away at this point!
Reaching Limon was a welcome relief, the biggest town east of
Denver, I knew I could get off the exit here and find the local
7-Eleven which would have coin operated air machines. I soon had the
spare tire to the same pressure as the other tires. I
knew this because their machine's nib had a pressure gauge
built into it! I used a
payphone to call my mother and let her know where I was and that I'd
be there tonight. She was relieved as she hadn't heard from me that
day and was wondering how I was doing. Had I mention this
was before common long distance calling cards?
So I grabbed myself a 'Big Gulp' and got back in the car as twilight
settled to night and turned on the radio to hear a song of the like
I'd never heard before: ''Sweat Dreams'' by the Eurythmics.
This song perked me right up and I hoped I'd find more music like it
when I got to my new home town...
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