Wednesday, January 14, 2015

The Drive

1


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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