The Return Trip

Coming back was a bit stressful to start with. Some of us wanted to get home ASAP, and the rest of us wanted to get home ALAP. We finally got off around 12:45, forty five minutes after our planned departure time. The person I came closest to getting in an argument was with Bria: she wanted to go home the usual way, and I wanted to go by the Mass Pike to avoid city traffic in Troy and Bennington (Calling it "city traffic almost caused an argument itself: Bria thinks "city traffic" is traffic coming from the city, and I think it's traffic in a city; to that Bria says Bennington isn't a city, but I say it's close enough; what else do you call stoplight after stoplight in rapid succession surrounded by buildings!?!?! Bria says the main street of a town, but I disagreed heartily; when I did, she decided I was too angry to drive safely and kept telling Mama so on the phone, which eased the atmosphere tremendously.). I gave in, however, and we zoomed off toward the Green Mountain State.

We zoomed all the way to Bennington were we got stuck in--by MY definition--city traffic! In fact, when we came to the first intersection in that lovely city, I got stuck in the middle of the intersection. The traffic in front of me was moving until I was in the intersection, and then it stopped short and I was left in the middle. I always hate it when others do that, so it was particularly mortifying for me to be the one I usually would have sighed and shook my head at. Fortunately, the drivers coming from the other ways were quite congenial about the whole thing, but I was still humiliated. The light finally changed ahead, but the cars ahead moved only enough to let me through; the cars behind me couldn't move for a whole light change! That should give you an idea of how bad the traffic was.

We crept along for the next half hour to forty-five minutes slooooooowwwwwly. Like, a car length at a time. The worst part was that we were on a hill, and the car I was driving has a manual transmission. I stalled twice, but I was in perpetual fear of rolling into the car behind me. He kept creeping up on me every time we stopped, but somehow I managed to get through the day bump-free. After about 1.5 miles and 0.75 hours, we came to the end of the line of traffic where a traffic director told us to turn around: a car accident ahead was going to block the road for two hours. Two hours!!!! @#$%&! I turned around and headed back the way we came. It was almost a bit relieving, because we could at last go at least 3o mph! I stopped at a full-serve gas station and got gas and directions. The pump attendant told us he heard that a car full of live ammo was on fire. He also gave us directions to get back home.

We set off on the hour-long detour the man at the gas station had outlined to us, but stopped at a Dunkin Donuts and got bagels and a donut and a bunch of other stuff and stopped at a park and ate them and so on.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, but I was quite tired by the time we got home. This time the trip took at least seven hours (Bria is pretty sure that it was six and a quarter hours; but I say that's impossible: the regular time is five hours, and we spent an hour in Bennington at least, the detour took an hour, and we spent fifteen minutes at Fairwood; Bria says I am so exaggerating, but I'm not. Trust me.). We were going to time that trip too, but like the first one, it took a lot longer than expected. At least we came close to setting a record for a trip time going to or from The Hill! (The record was made this March, when Daddy tried to go to NY a new way with the GPS and took over eight hours with no car trouble.)