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.)

Inspiration Arrives in Droves

...or, more specifically, in drives. I'll start from the beginning:

Finally, events in my life have attained the slight absurdity that is so necessary for a successful "events" post. To start with, Bria, Cara, Ryan, and I went to the Holschers’ house in NY for the weekend. We had a wonderful time, and I’ll write more about that later. We had an interesting trip back, and I'll write about that later, too. For now I’ll just write about the trip going TO The Hills. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a long time may remember my post in late May or early June about the Mazda breaking down on the way to Cape Cod. To ensure that a breakdown of the same type did not recur, Daddy sent the Mazda to a transmission repair shop. There the car was worked on for a period of about one week, and came out good as new!

Or so we hoped. With great faith and hope, we set out early Friday afternoon for the long journey out. We decided we would time and see how quickly we could make it to the Holschers’. Bria drove. The car drove fairly well, although it felt very under-powered and was shifting a little late. Still, its performance was adequate....until we were about halfway between Bennington and Brattleboro. We were roaring along Rte. 9 (the car was having trouble on the hills; the RPMs came quite close to redlining multiple times.) when suddenly Bria said something like, "Is that smoke coming out from under the hood?" We realized that it was, and began quickly looking for a place to stop. After about a mile, we finally found a place. It was called something like "The Spiral Shop" and was a nice little isolated shop that sold such things as garden signs, sun catchers, and chimes. Bria pulled into the small parking lot and shut of the car.

As soon as we stopped, Bria popped the hood, and I jumped out to open it. This proved to be easier said than done. The smoke was pouring out so fast that I was not able to see the latch. After about five minutes I finally found it by feel and propped the hood open. The smoke continued to pour out.

In the meantime, the man who was tending the shop came over to see what was going on. "What have we here? Fair damsels in distress?" (He hadn’t seen me or Ryan yet apparently) Upon receiving an affirmative answer from Cara, he immediately removed his shirt and sat down to wax glass sunflower petals. He let us use his phone, and was quite nice if a bit strange.

After about one hour of waiting for the engine to cool down (the apparent problem was that the radiator had overheated; the root of the problem we later found to be a broken belt that was supposed to run the pump for the radiator coolant), we set off up the road again hoping for the best. The best never came. For the next mile or so we watched the temperature gauge steadily move from left to right until it was past the "H." We pulled to the side of the road again, and were glad to find that we had cell phone service. (We didn’t at the Spiral Shop.) We called home to find that Daddy had already left with our Toyota Camry and was approximately 1.75 hours away. We settled down for a long and stressful wait.

Fortunately, however, the wait was nowhere near as stressful as we had anticipated. We actually had a rather fun time. The first twenty minutes were a bit tense, but after that I actually enjoyed myself. Cara and I played Catch Phrase while Bria and Ryan read books. Ryan joined in, too, after a while. We tried playing alphabet, but the only sign we could see said "Marlboro ® 1" and that only gave you two letters to start with. The rest of the time was passed just watching cars and their license plates and their passengers. One man stopped and asked if we were all right, and we told him we were, thank you, and he left. About an hour later, Cara cried, "Oh great, another car is sto—" and we all looked to see that Daddy had arrived. I didn’t even feel like he had taken a long time.

So off we drove—this time with me at the wheel ‘cause Bria can’t yet drive a standard—into the wild blue yonder. I stalled once while trying to get onto the road, but after that we were fine until Stamford, NY (where I drove over the curb at a gas station). From there we were fine the rest of the way. The entire trip took only seven and a half hours!!!!!

Just letting you know..

Nothing to write about today. That's just the worst, when you're up long hours--or just at the computer screen for long hours--just trying to think of something interesting to entertain the world with. I love it when during the course of my day something happens and I think, "What an awesome thing to blog about!!" But that hasn't happened in the last three days or so. I guess you'll just have to be long-suffering (I realize it causes suffering when I don't write... ;) and wait for the time when my inspiration is renewed.

What people drive in New Boston these days

I saw one of these today driving on Chestnut Hill Road. Less than a mile from my house! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to gape because I was driving and this car was going quite speedily in the opposite direction. In case you don't know, it's a Bentley Continental GT. Powered by a 12 cylinder engine, it has a base price of around $160,000. I didn't have enough time to check up on performance stats, but the info above should give a pretty basic idea.

My life (and near death)

As a side note: We had a Sandford gathering today. I had a really fun time. There's almost nothing better than a close-knit extended family.

I had an exciting little incident the other day. I was helping Daddy move his boat out for the road (for sale: 25' US Yacht; interested, call us) and I was driving the tractor while Daddy used a rope wrapped around the trailor hitch of the golf cart to keep the boat from rolling down the incline we were descending. I stopped for some reason, put the tractor's brake on, and started to get out of the tractor. Unfortunately, my shorts caught on the accelerator (a lever, not a pedal) and I was left partly hanging from the tractor and halfway hopping as the tractor roared down the drive pulling the boat--and the parked golf cart--behind it. I managed to stop the tractor before any damage was done, but the boat kept coming. I had to go a bit further or be smashed flat as a pancake, so I did, but Daddy got the boat under control pretty quickly once I stopped pulling it. Fun stuff, huh?