Remember yesterday when I was waxing poetic about enjoying the journey, never mind the destination? Well, today I enjoyed very little of it. Today my journey was mostly miserable.
When I originally looked for a route for the 2nd day of the trip, I noticed that pretty much any road I used to drive across Connecticut and Rhode Island went near Hartford and Providence, so I chose those as my two stops on the way to Boston. The plan was to leave Bennington early, stop for lunch in Hartford, stroll through downtown Providence in the mid-afternoon, check into my hotel in Cambridge after a brief stop at the Harvard Bookstore, then ditch the car and catch public transit into Boston for dinner. But, of course, when we plan, the travel gods laugh.
I woke up this morning with completely clogged sinuses and a raging headache, after my body clock decided that alarms were for suckers, and I was sleeping until 10. It took the coffee and decongestants until 10:45 to kick in, but then I was off... only a couple of hours behind schedule.
I made a quick stop at Bennington College, because it was only 5 minutes out of the way, and it allowed me to make a 30 Rock reference on Instagram. From there, I asked Garmin Man to take me to Hartford, and he had one of his obviously you're insane and that place doesn't exist moments, so I asked Google Woman instead. First mistake.
While the Google Maps app is much better at finding locations and staying connected, the directions are absolutely terrible. I had barely left Vermont when I'd already been told to turn the wrong way twice in a row, making Google Woman begin insisting that I turn around immediately. I'm not sure a computerised voice can sound panicked, but she seemed fairly anxious while repeating "turn left" nonstop until I found a place to circle back. She then directed me on the longest detour around some Massachusetts suburb possible before putting me on the Masspike going toward New York. I pulled off and gave Garmin Man a chance, who informed me minutes later that he'd lost connection and couldn't get it back. My phone then flashed up an alert that its battery was about to die, because the charger had come loose hours before. Even plugged back in, it couldn't charge fast enough to replace the speed at which it was draining.
So I shut off my phone. I was far, FAR from my printed just in case directions, so I decided to follow the road signs. I knew I needed to go southeast, so at any fork, I picked the road that took me in that direction.
Not only was my new strategy less stressful, it was also much more accurate; within a short time I had crossed into Connecticut. It also gave me the opportunity to do some road sign banter with myself (eg It says Canaan to the left, so I'll go right. I mean, Canaan's a hell of a town, but I've just come from Canaan and it's not the kind of place I need to see twice today!), and navigation by Gilmore Girls (eg Hey, Litchfield is that way. What was it that happened in Litchfield? Did Luke move there? I remember Litchfield being near Stars Hollow, and Stars Hollow was 30 minutes from Hartford with no traffic. I'll go toward Litchfield). When I finally saw signs for Hartford, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment.
Of course, my lunch in Hartford plan was a failure, since I took the exit to the capitol building at almost 4pm. I drove a couple of blocks looking for parking, and found myself in a pretty rough area of town. I was tired and didn't have the patience to look for a better place to leave my car and something interesting to do, so I asked Garmin Man how to get to Providence, and he got me there just before 6. At this point I had a very full bladder and cramped up legs, so I pulled into the first place I saw that would allow me to deal with both these problems: a mall. I also managed to grab a coffee and get back on the road around half an hour later.... Just in time to get stuck in traffic.
When I was nowhere near Cambridge at 7:30, I gave up hope on anything Harvard related and updated my destination to the hotel. I hate the vast majority of fast food, and didn't feel like sitting around a restaurant, but I was starving. There were loads of strip malls on the way, so I figured I'd just pop into a supermarket for a sandwich and eat it when I got to the hotel. Nothing. Absolutely nowhere selling foodstuffs. I could've bought almost anything else imaginable on that road -- cars, lumber, pet supplies, smart casual wear -- but not groceries.
When I finally made it to the hotel, it was 8:30pm and I was fed up with everything and everyone. I managed to squeeze the little red Fiesta into the last tiny parking space in their garage and get up to my room without strangling anyone. Turns out there's no food nearby here either, so my dinner consists of handfuls of the peanuts and granola I packed for snacks. And I'm not going into Boston tonight, because I'm angry at the world, and I'm a Habs fan, so you do the math.
Tomorrow is looking like it will be one of the rare times that I'm going to be happy to get back to Seattle. And I may think twice the next time I have a brilliant idea to take a road trip.
Saturday 25 October 2014
Friday 24 October 2014
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont
A few months ago, I started missing my travels. I don't miss flying constantly or giving way too much money to airlines, because I still do that. But it's just part of my commute between where my heart lives, and where the rest of me has to live most of the time. I miss going places I've never been. Exploring. So I decided to make it a point to visit the states I hadn't been to before, which is about half of them, before moving out of the US. And that's why now, after some previous cancellations due to circumstances beyond my control, I find myself in Bennington, Vermont.
Around the time I started looking for new places to go, Sam Roberts Band posted their US tour schedule for this fall, which included a show in Portland, Maine. I'm not much of Sam Roberts groupie, but I can say that I never tire of seeing him live. As I've said before, music is like a relationship. The records can be the crush and the courtship, but the live show is like sex -- it can make or break it, no matter how well things are going. For example, much as I still enjoy Camera Obscura's music, their live show was so boring that I lost the infatuation. They didn't seem to want to be there, so neither did I. But Sam Roberts Band took an enjoyment of the albums and made me fall in love at the first live gig I attended. So they were a good enough excuse for me to spend a long weekend seeing New England in a rental car.
I took the red eye Wednesday night, and my connecting flight had mechanical issues, which meant I got to my Portland hotel around noon yesterday, on no sleep whatsoever. After a loooong nap, I wandered downtown a bit, had pizza with mashed potatoes and bacon on it, tried a local beer, and went to the show, which was fantastic as always. Portland reminds me of a hipper, slightly bigger, friendlier Juneau, Alaska. And I can't really explain what that means unless you've been there. It's just an attitude thing, I think.
This morning, jet lag got the best of me and I didn't hit the road until midday. I fired up the Garmin app and headed to Cape Elizabeth to take a photo of a lighthouse, because one can't leave Maine without a lighthouse photo. It's one of those laws no one ever tells you about, but that counts toward the Three Strikes legislation nonetheless. I walked out toward the water and snapped a few pictures, but soon became fearful that I, or at least my phone, was going to get blown off the rocks and into the breakers, so I turned back and pointed the little red Ford Fiesta toward New Hampshire.
Unfortunately my phone had no signal out on the cape, so I couldn't use my satellite navigation app and had to trust my pre-printed just in case directions to get me on my way. Of course that went poorly, and I drove miles through beach towns (which were completely interchangeable with every Washington or Oregon beach town I've ever been to) before finally reconnecting with the guiding satellites and getting back on track. It guided me to Concord, New Hampshire, where I spent maybe half an hour wandering Main Street and looking at the State House, before setting me off again toward Vermont. It got dark not long after I crossed the state line, so I haven't seen much of the third state in my day yet, but I'll rectify that tomorrow.
This is my first attempt at using this particular sat nav app, and so far I have mixed feelings about it. Probably 60% of the time it has been useless, either because it can't find gps, it can't figure out where I'm telling it I want to go, or it "can't calculate route," which I take to be the high-tech version of can't get there from here. On the other hand, the Englishman giving me directions is always very patient, and calmly states the new route when I inevitably fail to follow his instructions. He never shouts, "Where are you going? You've missed another turn, you twat!" which is what I tend to say when assisting the driver with directions. I'm going to give the app another day, but really wish I could download that special add-on with Billy Connolly's voice; he'd definitely say something rude to me when I went the wrong way.
Navigational issues aside, though, it was quite a nice several hours of driving -- no big multi-lane interstates, just winding, leafy, highways that slow to 25mph to become Main Street in endless small towns. I came here with no particular agenda beyond the concert, reserved hotels in a couple of arbitrary cities, and found routes in between. After I had my flights, I did some research on road trips in the area, and they all centered on autumn leaves and covered bridges, so I ignored them. I haven't seen any covered bridges as yet, but I have seen a hell of a lot of multicolored foliage. It's pretty. It is. And I guess this much of it would be really fascinating if you're excited by such a thing. I, personally, was more excited by the many signs telling me to watch for what was crossing over the next few miles. Mostly it was moose, occasionally deer, and once snowmobiles. But I never saw any of the three, despite very keenly watching for moose, deer, and snowmobiles in my path.
At any rate, when you're trying to get somewhere specific on a road trip, all you care about is getting there, as quickly and easily as possible. When the point of the road trip is the road, it's just the next curve, the scenery in the distance, and the song on the radio. It's so much easier to enjoy.
Around the time I started looking for new places to go, Sam Roberts Band posted their US tour schedule for this fall, which included a show in Portland, Maine. I'm not much of Sam Roberts groupie, but I can say that I never tire of seeing him live. As I've said before, music is like a relationship. The records can be the crush and the courtship, but the live show is like sex -- it can make or break it, no matter how well things are going. For example, much as I still enjoy Camera Obscura's music, their live show was so boring that I lost the infatuation. They didn't seem to want to be there, so neither did I. But Sam Roberts Band took an enjoyment of the albums and made me fall in love at the first live gig I attended. So they were a good enough excuse for me to spend a long weekend seeing New England in a rental car.
I took the red eye Wednesday night, and my connecting flight had mechanical issues, which meant I got to my Portland hotel around noon yesterday, on no sleep whatsoever. After a loooong nap, I wandered downtown a bit, had pizza with mashed potatoes and bacon on it, tried a local beer, and went to the show, which was fantastic as always. Portland reminds me of a hipper, slightly bigger, friendlier Juneau, Alaska. And I can't really explain what that means unless you've been there. It's just an attitude thing, I think.
This morning, jet lag got the best of me and I didn't hit the road until midday. I fired up the Garmin app and headed to Cape Elizabeth to take a photo of a lighthouse, because one can't leave Maine without a lighthouse photo. It's one of those laws no one ever tells you about, but that counts toward the Three Strikes legislation nonetheless. I walked out toward the water and snapped a few pictures, but soon became fearful that I, or at least my phone, was going to get blown off the rocks and into the breakers, so I turned back and pointed the little red Ford Fiesta toward New Hampshire.
Unfortunately my phone had no signal out on the cape, so I couldn't use my satellite navigation app and had to trust my pre-printed just in case directions to get me on my way. Of course that went poorly, and I drove miles through beach towns (which were completely interchangeable with every Washington or Oregon beach town I've ever been to) before finally reconnecting with the guiding satellites and getting back on track. It guided me to Concord, New Hampshire, where I spent maybe half an hour wandering Main Street and looking at the State House, before setting me off again toward Vermont. It got dark not long after I crossed the state line, so I haven't seen much of the third state in my day yet, but I'll rectify that tomorrow.
This is my first attempt at using this particular sat nav app, and so far I have mixed feelings about it. Probably 60% of the time it has been useless, either because it can't find gps, it can't figure out where I'm telling it I want to go, or it "can't calculate route," which I take to be the high-tech version of can't get there from here. On the other hand, the Englishman giving me directions is always very patient, and calmly states the new route when I inevitably fail to follow his instructions. He never shouts, "Where are you going? You've missed another turn, you twat!" which is what I tend to say when assisting the driver with directions. I'm going to give the app another day, but really wish I could download that special add-on with Billy Connolly's voice; he'd definitely say something rude to me when I went the wrong way.
Navigational issues aside, though, it was quite a nice several hours of driving -- no big multi-lane interstates, just winding, leafy, highways that slow to 25mph to become Main Street in endless small towns. I came here with no particular agenda beyond the concert, reserved hotels in a couple of arbitrary cities, and found routes in between. After I had my flights, I did some research on road trips in the area, and they all centered on autumn leaves and covered bridges, so I ignored them. I haven't seen any covered bridges as yet, but I have seen a hell of a lot of multicolored foliage. It's pretty. It is. And I guess this much of it would be really fascinating if you're excited by such a thing. I, personally, was more excited by the many signs telling me to watch for what was crossing over the next few miles. Mostly it was moose, occasionally deer, and once snowmobiles. But I never saw any of the three, despite very keenly watching for moose, deer, and snowmobiles in my path.
At any rate, when you're trying to get somewhere specific on a road trip, all you care about is getting there, as quickly and easily as possible. When the point of the road trip is the road, it's just the next curve, the scenery in the distance, and the song on the radio. It's so much easier to enjoy.
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