The Night Run to Troy
The last time I went end to end on New York state, driving, I was twenty years younger and living in Boston. Friends from college were getting married in the wilds of Cleveland, so I packed up the car and headed west after work, headed straight on I90. Stopped out in Hadley (Holyoke/Amherst area, for those of you not up on your Chicopees-and-qs) to pick up my friend Rob, and we tag-teamed it west as long as caffeine would carry us. Near Buffalo we pulled in for a couple of hours' worth of sleep at a rest stop, put the seats back, and snoozed. Sunlight woke us up, and we took ourselves the rest of the way.
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Thursday I was set to do an appearance at RPI at the invitation of Lee Sheldon, speaking to his students about what the life of a game writer is really like. Mind you, I'm not sure I know yet, but Lee was very generous to me with advice when I was just getting started, and I am happy to pay that forward. Also, I had been forced to bail on another invite a couple of years back, enmeshed in the coils of Splinter Cell:Conviction, and so it seemed like a good way to even those karmic scales, or something.
Originally I had been slated to fly in Thursday morning - Toronto to Boston, Boston to Albany, then a quick jaunt up the road to Troy and RPI. The margin for error was not huge on this one, and when I checked the weather forecast on Wednesday, I saw snow for Toronto in the AM, and rain for Boston.
Rain in Boston generally does not mean "on time connection". So I thought about it, and I talked with folks at Ubi Toronto, and I came up with a dumb idea. It wasn't the dumbest thing I have ever done. That involved sticking both hands in a vat of liquid nitrogen when I was 16, and it sort of set a benchmark I don't think I will be able to eclipse without actually killing myself. But it was up there.
The idea was simple. Rent a car Wednesday night. Drive to Troy. Do the thing. Drive back. Be at work Friday.
***
I cut out of work at 6:30 on Wednesday. The rental car place was nearby, but it closed a 7. Cleverly, I took a cab. It went roughly nowhere - traffic and a cautious driver who, despite his GPS, refused to believe my destination existed. I finally told him to let me out, then spent the moments from 6:40 to 6:55 frantically trying to find street addresses amidst the skyscrapers. Tried to use the iPad to ID the location; Ipad chose that moment not to want to talk to the cell network. Last minute, I found it, a gleaming corporate tower. The rental car joint had been banished to the basement with the food court and the other retail morlocks.
Eventually, I got the car. Went back to the hotel to load up my overnight bag and a couple of bottles of caffeinated beverage. Brought along the iPod, in hopes that the USB plug in the car stereo dash wasn't cruel hoax - there's nothing like listening to podcasters interviewing people who honestly believe in Nazi flying saucer bases in Antarctica to make the midnight miles speed by. No joy, though. I found a radio station and headed for the water.
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Most Americans, I suspect, don't think about the setup of Niagara Falls. I mean, it has water going down a falls, and it's between two Great Lakes, and Canada is on the other side, and that's that. The somewhat more complicated actual geography comes as a shock.
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Buffalo is all construction, freeways, and strange odors. I rumble through it, still dialed in to a Toronto station that plays bands like The Kooks and no Bachmann Turner Overdrive. 90 is waiting for me near the airport, a long straightish run past the Finger Lakes and east into the night. The names along the way are familiar: Rochester, Syracuse, side routes to Binghampton and Schenectady. There's family history in upstate New York - my great-grandparents' farm, where my mother and her siblings spent their summers. One sister went to Skidmore, one got double educated in Poughkeepsie. An uncle went to RPI. It isn't entirely unfamiliar territory, or it shouldn't be. I stop for a late dinner at a rest stop Tim Hortons, wash it down with Diet Pepsi and a Five Hour Energy, and put the hammer down.
****
Radio fades out near Rochester, and I go station hunting. In summer, this is easier - there is always a baseball game coming in from somewhere. Now I cruise the FM dial, and stop down in the low numbers when I hear AC/DC, "Mistress for Christmas". The stations in the 80s are always interesting, college or public broadcasting or oddballs just hanging on to the edge of the dial. This one is out of U of R, and the show I've stumbled onto is the metal-themed "Academy of Shred", with the genial host genuinely excited about introducing Piledriver's venerable "Witch Hunt" and the like. The selections tend to veer more toward the black metal/wizard rock school of things, which means I get a healthy dose of what sounds like Cookie Monster's D&D campaign. But it keeps me going.
Eventually, the metal goes. I jump over to a Classical station, and get a triple play of French female composers. One of the selected pieces is a "Lullaby". I rage at the radio for the irony, but I don't change the dial. As lullabies go, it isn't particularly effective.
I drive. I check mile markers. I estimate how far I can go in the morning and still make it in time, if I have to stop. And I drive.
****
The long run down into the Mohawk Valley feels like falling. There's nothing visible off the side of the road - impossible to tell if you're careening through rock or forest or swamp or just plain darkness. And it is down, down, down, all the way down a long slope, trucks throwing on the flashers and dashing for the shoulder, the smell of burning brake pads. I lose the radio here, and don't find anything else that comes in consistently. The last song of the night is Blue Oyster Cult singing "Burning for You", it fades into static halfway through.
I start looking for places to stop at this point. Close enough to Troy to make it in the morning if I get up early, or so the GPS says. I see one exit with hotels, but can't find my Thruway ticket. I decide to keep going, to find a rest stop and locate it, then take the next exit. No luck. I find the ticket - it had drifted under the seat - and get back on the road. Next exit, no hotels. The one after - no hotels. The one after...the same, just interstate interchanges. Eventually I'm at the turnoff for I87. I'm there. I find a hotel near the Albany airport, and I check in.
After all that, I can't sleep. ESPN is rebroadcasting Miami of Ohio-directional Michigan. The announcers ramble on about how MoO is a "cradle of coaches". They mention Paul Brown and Ara Parseghian. They are very careful to keep the topic to football.
Eventually, I fall asleep.
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