Puke, Gas, More Gas and There Ought to be a Law

Our second day at Embassy Suites in Columbus.

Our lil' sweetie, Violet, loves to stay in Grammy & Grampy's hotel when we're here, and stayed with us last night. Breakfast is included here, so the three of us went down from our top-floor digs to dine on a variety of wonders. Violet enjoyed scrambled eggs, French toast, honeydew and cantaloupe, and bacon all washed down with Tru-Moo. Shortly after, her grammy took her to the pool for a refreshing swim, then back to the seventh floor for a refreshing nap.

Somewhat later, our darlin' began making some slightly uncomfortable noises, and soon our hotel room was the victim of some serious uppy-chucky.

Back home on Dresden Street Violet spent some quality time resting on the sofa, while brother Victor spent hours jumping, stomping and flopping in his plastic swimming pool decorated with pictures of octopi.  Vic has some communication issues, but the big smile on his face made it pretty clear he was enjoying himself.

Meanwhile, poor big sis still isn't feeling well. She was supposed to have a sleep-over with girlfriends tonight but had to postpone. I hope she doesn't remember this day as her grandparents coming to town and making her sick.

One of the nice things about coming to Ohio to visit our elder son's family was the price of gas here. Traditionally, it was thirty cents a gallon less than home in Massachusetts, and had a bigger spread still with the (price-controlled, hehehe) gas on the New York Thruway. And of course no experienced traveler would buy gas in the 48-mile stretch of Pennsylvania around Erie, where sneaky pumpers would jump out and pump a little gas for show, then immediately turn the pump back to zero and overcharge you for what they did. Pretty much the same as they do in Mexico. But then we'd get to Ohio and at every rotary intersection there would be a Pilot station with what seemed to us was really cheap gas.

Not any more! Just guessing, but it appears that the Land of Presidents has, since we were here last year, passed a new gas tax that brings them into parity with New York and Connecticut (the absolute worst.) Instead of thirty cents cheaper, the price was thirty cents more than at home! What you see in the picture was last year. Now the price here is about four bucks a gallon, with diesel about the same.

On the other hand...there's a ton of infrastructure work going on in Ohio, and there are new bridges everywhere. While gasoline taxation is a reverse tax and I'm agin' it, the biggest moneymakers—corporations, churches and rich folk—aren't paying their share, so this new price structure in Ohio is at least putting the dough back into the roads.

Speaking of gas: our new Mazda 5 has a little red dashboard display that's much like a lot of other cars. But I had never seen a display before that tells you how many miles you have remaining on what's left in the tank.

I've got out of the habit of looking at the gas gauge—which in this car is pretty well hidden behind the steering column—any more. I just take a quick glance at the Range number and say, “Hell, nothing to worry about; we've got 200 miles left.” But then we climb a long series of hills, and every thousand feet or so the remaining mileage number drops by one. I begin to lose faith. Suddenly we've passed the crest of the hills, and we're losing altitude on the other side, and the Range number begins to increase! The twenty-five miles worth of gas it took to climb four miles of hills is returned to us as we descend the other side. It turns out that whatever the range number registered when you left the gas station after fill-up, is about what you'll get, because a complete circumference of the world averages just about level.

Now here's question every weary road traveler must have asked himself at least once: shouldn't there be a law that the restaurants listed on highway exits should at least be in the same county?

From experience McDonald's is the worst offender. Of course McD's is the worst offender in many ways, and while politically they represent most of the things I find repugnant, they do make the best caramel iced coffee and following many dry hours on the highway no other refreshment comes close. But when you're trying to make 587 miles by sundown, it's aggravating that the little arrow at the end of the exit ramp means you have to drive halfway to goddam Canada!

At the very least, the mileage to each restaurant (and gas station and hotel on the other signs) should be on the sign! Then you can make an informed decision whether or not to add an extra day to your trip just to get an iced coffee.

Texting, E-ZPass, Deer and our Dears

New York State has an interesting thing going. To minimize the number of morons texting while driving, what used to be known as Rest Stops are now known as:

If just a few of the kamikazes actually accept this suggestion, lives will be saved. To give advanced notice in the hope the urge to text will hold off until the automobile isn't in motion, these promising signs are posted:

Finally, even the Turnpike Plazas are in on the act:

Good work, New York.

We've used E-ZPass for more than a decade now. Amazingly, we're using the same transponders we were originally furnished. With all the traveling we do, whether FEMA-deployed or wheeling around the northeast where most of the nations toll roads are, it's been a useful tool, saving having to wait in line to pay tolls, or searching for cash.

When you zip through the E-ZPass lane, the bottom light of a three-beam array similar to a traffic light flashes green, with a cheery Thank You message across it. Unless it's one of those new overhead jobs you fly through at 65 mph. Those don't say Thank You, but you do.

But yesterday morning, as we smugly zipped by waiting ticket patrons, the green light didn't illuminate. A yellow one did, and across it was: Low Balance. Oops. When we signed up with E-ZPass they took a few bucks on our credit card number and explained that whenever the balance reached a low limit they'd take another $25 until the low limit was reached again. Now and then over the years I've noticed the twenty-five bucks as a line item on our credit card bill and never blinked. All those Thank Yous over the years for making our travels easier. But now, what? Suddenly it occurred to us that it's all Target's fault. Yep, somebody hacked Target for the credit card information for every transaction from Thanksgiving to Christmas last year or some such. And we were among the millions whose information lay at their mercy. Our principal credit card, Chase, by law responsible for the losses that might accrue, did what they had to do and reissued millions of credit cards with new numbers. Including ours. And the hackers didn't get to use our card until it was too late for the number to work. But E-ZPass still automatically billed that number and sure enough, it didn't work. Problem is, we were already on the Massachusetts Turnpike and the New York Thruway and didn't know if we could get off without being chased to ground by troopers accusing us of trying to avoid tolls!

Mary Frances got on the phone (E-ZPass is kind enough to post their phone number at every exit) and received the same fine cooperation from those folks as we had received all along, although we would be billed a $5 fine when we exited next, which happened at the Route 88/86/17 about which I blithered yesterday. Considering the condition of that road, I should have remained on the turnpike to the end, and paid the five bucks there.

In the early morning fog today as we left the Seneca Iroquois Casino for our family in Columbus, Ohio, with a too-brief lunch with Mary Frances' sweet cousin Carol (Hastings) Lenarz along the way, we came upon three deer at the edge of the Turnpike, and slowed down accordingly, aggravating the car behind us . The deer on the pavement moved off, and we slowly passed by them as the other car sped by us. With all the acres of woodland beyond, why would these deer threaten themselves by taking breakfast at the edge of a dangerous highway? Suddenly it was clear. On a visit to Yellowstone National Park in 2009, we noticed the same phenomena with the elk there. Rather than hide in the thousands of woodland acres, the elk came to the lodges, and dined on the well-fed, well-watered delicious grasses that man creates. So too, the deer of New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio, come to the edge of the highways, where we clever humans run tractors and plant seed to create these delicious verges, the ruminants' version of first-class restaurant arugula salads.

In the late afternoon we checked into Embassy Suites in Columbus. We couldn't afford this hotel had Mary Frances not earned mega Hilton Honors points over many FEMA years. Shortly after, we met up with our son Dana, well known in the grunge music industry as drummer and singer for Cheater Slicks, a band who have rattled the rafters for more than twenty-five years, his bride Wendy, without whom many UPS employees would not get paid, and our grandchildren Violet and Victor; in total the gang pictured here outside Red Robin tonight:

Now we have that little cutie top left staying with us tonight.  Makes the trip so far worthwhile.

Day One: The Decider, FOP, and Who's Route Is This, Anyway?

Our first day, Road Trip '14. A bit chilly for the end of May, but nice driving weather, and looking forward to the longest in miles, if not in duration, of our round-the-nation motor tours. One of the things that enthused us about this leg of the trip is that, instead of driving west on the New York Thruway, which we've done several million times (48 years ago we actually lived in Buffalo), or Routes 84 or 80 or 76 which we've done several hundred times each, this time we would take Route 88/86/17 across the lower border of New York State, which we've done only once, in the other direction at that. Why one road has three route numbers we can only guess, but apparently New York State and the federales have different opinions about it. Michelle (the sweetie who lives in our GPS) seems content to just call it Route 17. Some great town names, like Wiliwana and this one:

I couldn't help but wonder if John Marley's character in The Godfather lived there.

Although the scenery was often lovely, and totally countrified save for five miles fore and aft of Binghamton, I wouldn't recommend it. 80% of its 280-odd miles are what we would describe as mafioso; that is, they were made of concrete back in the days when organized crime controlled both the concrete industry and many highway commissions. Because seasonal expansion and contraction of concrete requires frequent expansion joints and two angle irons for each joint, spaced within a hundred feet of each other. The result, for a new concrete road, is a tick-tick tick-tick tick-tick sound for the length of the highway. For a slightly older road, the sound is thunk-thunk thunk-thunk thunk-thunk. And a few years after that it's blam-blam blam-blam blam-blam. A trip from New York City to Buffalo, before the Thruway mafioso road was replaced with asphalt, meant hearing thump-thump some 23,000 times. There are insane asylums in both cities, undoubtedly due to its many years as the premier mafioso road. Repairing such roads is neither cost-effective or technically possible, so states that have them often try to disguise their original misjudgment with another: covering them with a layer of asphalt, which works until the first warm day, when the asphalt follows the contour of the expansion joints and goes thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk.

Since few things are more boring than being a passenger when I'm driving, Mary Frances brings her knitting and her iPad. When I ask her what she's knitting (which I asked the other day and forgot already) she tells me it's a clutch. Since this car has an automatic transmission I assume there's some other meaning for clutch, but surely I'll forget that, too.

I've always taken pride in the habit of keeping my eyes on the horizon, or at least the next bend in the road. This enables me to see the maximum of the beautiful scenery ahead, to discern large or small animals in the road ahead who may represent a danger to us—or vice versa—or to avoid that moron who's too busy texting to stay in his lane. Or (you knew this), cops. No longer. After this winter in Massachusetts, especially after numerous visits to Fitchburg, I now suffer from FOP: Fear of Potholes. Now I focus my eyes on the road twenty feet in front of the car, searching for those nasty shadows that imply surface sinkholes that eat your tires and rims and nerves and wallet. Before setting out for this adventure, we had a number of adventures with potholes that resulted in a new tire ($150), a new rim ($600—I didn't even know I had alloy wheels) and an alignment ($90.) I crank the steering wheel this way and that avoiding them, and scaring the hell out of anyone coming the other who naturally assumes I'm that moron who's too busy texting to stay in his lane.

We were looking out the window at a great blend of tree varieties, conifers and deciduous. It seemed obvious that the word conifer was related in some way to cone, but the word deciduous caused me to wonder. Perhaps the root is common with that for decide. Which could mean that someone thought those trees decide to drop their leaves in autumn. Made a lot of sense to me, for a second or two. Then I realized that if leafy trees decided to drop their leaves, then the pines equally decided not to, which would make them deciduous, too! This is typical of the majestic thoughts that wander around in this old gray head while my bride is knitting a clutch.

At mid-afternoon we arrived at our first day's destination, Seneca Iroquois Casino in Salamanca, New York:

While the road to get there is hell under wheels, the Casino is clean, well-maintained, with lovely rooms and nice restaurants Only two complaints: the slots could be a lot looser, and the old dude who tends bar should know how to make a martini by now.

On the Road Again

Well, hello fans (both of you)...

We haven't posted to this in a couple of years since we've either been (a) not traveling or (b) deployed to a FEMA disaster, which has been our calling at other times.  Anyway, we haven't done either for nearly a year, and tomorrow, May 29, we're heading west to see family, friends, scenery, history and baseball!  If you follow along, thank you for your kind attention.