Tonight she comes
I managed to log a ton of mileage since Wednesday evening.
Wednesday evening I drove Miss V to a friend's house in a part of New Jersey I hadn't visited before, in a northern part of Jersey I don't frequent. Even by my old road standards it was a long trip, especially since I'd be returning home very soon afterward, about 60 miles each way. My phone's Map kept shifting suggested routes based on traffic, so I didn't know for sure where we'd be going short of doing some of it on I-80, which I've used at varying points in my life and find deeply boring. I was less bored and more white-knuckled during some of the downpours I drove us through on 80, but when the sky wasn't pelting us the clouds and then the twilight were very pretty. Then I turned us off onto Route 15, and I remembered... imperfectly, but I remembered.
I used to spend a lot of time traveling Route 15, between New Jersey and Pennsylvania and from New York to Pennsylvania and back. Years. Even some childhood trips used it. But with my Civic becoming unreliable over the years I'd begun to stay much closer to home, at my most daring driving though some more middle and southern parts of NJ to visit a friend and none of that in the last year and a half. Prior to Wednesday, I don't think I've been on Route 15 in over ten years.
Enough was the same to be weird, enough was different to be weird. My ears popped at about the same place on the route they'd often pop. I think the exterior and sign for that McDonald's have been the same my entire life.
By the time I dropped Miss V off at her destination in an area of little lakes and narrow, twisting, hilly, unpredictable roads that reminded me of my backwoods Pennsylvania days so hard, night had fallen. I drove 15 east and gloried in the wide, open vistas, with the occasional cinematic flash of lightning illuminating areas ahead of me, and the feeling of regaining a long dormant part of my self and identity. Little sizzling sparks of memory returning, tiny stars appearing one by one in a cloudy, dark night sky. It felt therapeutic and fulfilling.
Then the deluge. And the trip home became a bit of a nightmare.
In the dark, pounding rain, fogging windows, and chaos, relying too hard on those sparks, I became overconfident and confused, and tried to freestyle it a bit to get to the Lincoln Tunnel. My phone map said taking 80 to the George Washington Bridge was faster, traffic-wise, but that's far from a favored way to go home. That would have been simple. One exit didn't take me where I thought it would, and I ended up going through areas I hadn't intended, areas I also hadn't been in years (I spent so much time in Orange, NJ in the late 90s but not since) but not where I intended. I briefly, unwantedly, ended up on the Turnpike, though the hit to my bank account from that and the Lincoln Tunnel hasn't appeared yet. I think my EZ-Pass registered.....
If not for the rain and flooding, I would've stopped on the side of the road somewhere and recalibrated my driving directions.
If not for the rain and flooding, I wouldn't have taken a big splash of dirty highway water to the face that somehow made it through the inch opening of the top of my driver's side window.
I didn't stop on the side of the road. I didn't find a place to relax a while or a place to get cheap gas. I drove as straight through as my confused, convoluted route took me and had dinner at a Wendy's on Queens Boulevard since the Wendy's on Route 15 closed its dining room at 8 pm, didn't let anyone use its restroom ever in these pandemic days, and demanded everyone go through its drive thru. About two hours later at Queens Boulevard I ordered at the counter, ate in the dining area, and used their restroom.
Despite how bad most of the ride home was, the trip had reawakened my urge to travel and wander, reawakened a part of myself that had once, for years, been dominant but forced into dormancy for a long time.
July 4th, the usual business Queens rooftop Roomie J and I watch fireworks from was unexpectedly closed, which forced us to scramble for a new location while the clock ticked down on the Macy's show starting. From my local drives, I thought of Grand Avenue in Maspeth. I was not alone. Crowds had formed at various parts of sidewalks near the Long Island Expressway and Grand Avenue at Maspeth. J and I found a piece of sidewalk along 69th Street bridging over the highway and watched the Macy's fireworks in front of us and the local, non-professional (illegal) fireworks behind us, a 360-degree experience. The local fireworks were far more interesting and diverse. Macy's did everything in red and gold, the same shapes, and the same tiny sparkles, too subtle, repetitive and tasteful. Macy's wasn't worth it. The locals gave us more shapes and colors and explosion sizes and differing sparkles. Between the fireworks and car exhaust, our throats took a beating but we had a great view and were content.
(We've had a lot of rain recently so we don't have the worries of drier areas.)
I get restless on summer nights though, so I waited a bit and did a car trip into the city to see the places supposedly lit up in holiday colors, this time with J coming along for a rare trip as a passenger. Although we faced traffic in Williamsburg on the Kosciuszko Bridge (done up in LED red and blue), Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and side streets, once we were off the Williamsburg Bridge in Manhattan things eased up. I went downtown to World Trade Center and then up to Midtown, seeing some areas downtown on my phone Map route that I'd never been through before. I drove her past places she used to go and hadn't been to in years, not that either of us always recognized them. So many landmark-for-me buildings have been torn down to put up tall, glass, box condo buildings, and I continue to be very unhappy about it. We left our home at 11 pm and made it back at about 1:30 am, so it was a lot of wandering.
Today I drove out to Westbury, Long Island for various stores and found out once there that it now has a Whole Foods.
I think I've done about 200 miles since Wednesday evening. I'm not sure I did 200 miles in all of 2020. You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost.
comments at Dreamwidth.
Wednesday evening I drove Miss V to a friend's house in a part of New Jersey I hadn't visited before, in a northern part of Jersey I don't frequent. Even by my old road standards it was a long trip, especially since I'd be returning home very soon afterward, about 60 miles each way. My phone's Map kept shifting suggested routes based on traffic, so I didn't know for sure where we'd be going short of doing some of it on I-80, which I've used at varying points in my life and find deeply boring. I was less bored and more white-knuckled during some of the downpours I drove us through on 80, but when the sky wasn't pelting us the clouds and then the twilight were very pretty. Then I turned us off onto Route 15, and I remembered... imperfectly, but I remembered.
I used to spend a lot of time traveling Route 15, between New Jersey and Pennsylvania and from New York to Pennsylvania and back. Years. Even some childhood trips used it. But with my Civic becoming unreliable over the years I'd begun to stay much closer to home, at my most daring driving though some more middle and southern parts of NJ to visit a friend and none of that in the last year and a half. Prior to Wednesday, I don't think I've been on Route 15 in over ten years.
Enough was the same to be weird, enough was different to be weird. My ears popped at about the same place on the route they'd often pop. I think the exterior and sign for that McDonald's have been the same my entire life.
By the time I dropped Miss V off at her destination in an area of little lakes and narrow, twisting, hilly, unpredictable roads that reminded me of my backwoods Pennsylvania days so hard, night had fallen. I drove 15 east and gloried in the wide, open vistas, with the occasional cinematic flash of lightning illuminating areas ahead of me, and the feeling of regaining a long dormant part of my self and identity. Little sizzling sparks of memory returning, tiny stars appearing one by one in a cloudy, dark night sky. It felt therapeutic and fulfilling.
Then the deluge. And the trip home became a bit of a nightmare.
In the dark, pounding rain, fogging windows, and chaos, relying too hard on those sparks, I became overconfident and confused, and tried to freestyle it a bit to get to the Lincoln Tunnel. My phone map said taking 80 to the George Washington Bridge was faster, traffic-wise, but that's far from a favored way to go home. That would have been simple. One exit didn't take me where I thought it would, and I ended up going through areas I hadn't intended, areas I also hadn't been in years (I spent so much time in Orange, NJ in the late 90s but not since) but not where I intended. I briefly, unwantedly, ended up on the Turnpike, though the hit to my bank account from that and the Lincoln Tunnel hasn't appeared yet. I think my EZ-Pass registered.....
If not for the rain and flooding, I would've stopped on the side of the road somewhere and recalibrated my driving directions.
If not for the rain and flooding, I wouldn't have taken a big splash of dirty highway water to the face that somehow made it through the inch opening of the top of my driver's side window.
I didn't stop on the side of the road. I didn't find a place to relax a while or a place to get cheap gas. I drove as straight through as my confused, convoluted route took me and had dinner at a Wendy's on Queens Boulevard since the Wendy's on Route 15 closed its dining room at 8 pm, didn't let anyone use its restroom ever in these pandemic days, and demanded everyone go through its drive thru. About two hours later at Queens Boulevard I ordered at the counter, ate in the dining area, and used their restroom.
Despite how bad most of the ride home was, the trip had reawakened my urge to travel and wander, reawakened a part of myself that had once, for years, been dominant but forced into dormancy for a long time.
July 4th, the usual business Queens rooftop Roomie J and I watch fireworks from was unexpectedly closed, which forced us to scramble for a new location while the clock ticked down on the Macy's show starting. From my local drives, I thought of Grand Avenue in Maspeth. I was not alone. Crowds had formed at various parts of sidewalks near the Long Island Expressway and Grand Avenue at Maspeth. J and I found a piece of sidewalk along 69th Street bridging over the highway and watched the Macy's fireworks in front of us and the local, non-professional (illegal) fireworks behind us, a 360-degree experience. The local fireworks were far more interesting and diverse. Macy's did everything in red and gold, the same shapes, and the same tiny sparkles, too subtle, repetitive and tasteful. Macy's wasn't worth it. The locals gave us more shapes and colors and explosion sizes and differing sparkles. Between the fireworks and car exhaust, our throats took a beating but we had a great view and were content.
(We've had a lot of rain recently so we don't have the worries of drier areas.)
I get restless on summer nights though, so I waited a bit and did a car trip into the city to see the places supposedly lit up in holiday colors, this time with J coming along for a rare trip as a passenger. Although we faced traffic in Williamsburg on the Kosciuszko Bridge (done up in LED red and blue), Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and side streets, once we were off the Williamsburg Bridge in Manhattan things eased up. I went downtown to World Trade Center and then up to Midtown, seeing some areas downtown on my phone Map route that I'd never been through before. I drove her past places she used to go and hadn't been to in years, not that either of us always recognized them. So many landmark-for-me buildings have been torn down to put up tall, glass, box condo buildings, and I continue to be very unhappy about it. We left our home at 11 pm and made it back at about 1:30 am, so it was a lot of wandering.
Today I drove out to Westbury, Long Island for various stores and found out once there that it now has a Whole Foods.
I think I've done about 200 miles since Wednesday evening. I'm not sure I did 200 miles in all of 2020. You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost.
comments at Dreamwidth.