26 April 2010
Hole in the Wall
(Hole in the Wall, East Portal)
It was an epic trip, played out in a minor fashion and human scale, and I am a mess this morning. I can’t quite believe it all happened in less than 48 hours, and I am here to tell you that the nation’s infrastructure is a mess.
I was thinking about that as I steered the rental truck through the great tunnel through Alleghany Mountain yesterday. We were in the eastbound tunnel of the pair that the truckers call “Hole in the Wall,” in tribute to the outlaws of Johnson County, Wyoming.
The tunnels mark the entrance or departure from the central plains of Pennsylvania, and the turnpike that is eternally under construction.
I recall as a kid riding in the back of the station-wagon and looking at the shiny white tiles that lined the rock surface and made the gloom seem orderly and under control.
Now the tiles have fallen away in great swathes and it looks as if things are falling apart. They say there are long term plans for major maintenance to be performed on the tunnels; however, this presents a major problem for traffic.[4] Terrible backups prompted officials to build the second tube. With today's traffic volumes, it would not be feasible to close one tube and route all traffic through the other. Possible plans include building a third (and possibly a fourth) tunnel, but money is tight and I don’t see it happening any time soon.
Things are falling apart. Maybe it is just me, but I don’t think so. Seeing so much of it disintegrating in such a short time is an impressive experience, and not a good one. They say China is all-new. America is starting to look pretty thread-bare.
I had yanked myself out of bed on Saturday morning in time to stumble into the cab, and the airplane worked as advertised. At that hour there were still some empty seats in the middle of the rows of three on he Airbus A-320, and the trip was not bad, except for the heavy turbulence at flight levels 18 and 22 which is always un-nerving, both going up and coming down.
The Captain was apologetic and seemed a little edgy, which is not a feature I like in a pilot-in-command. Oh well, not one of those things you have any control over. Landing equaled take-offs on this trip, which is the only thing that counts.
I took a cab into town, thumbing the Blackberry in an attempt to catch up to the lost time in the air and finally gave us as we swung off the expressway and onto Addison road for the couple miles east into Wrigleyville, the neighborhood around the grand old stadium.
The gang from East Lansing that moved to the Windy City after graduation is breaking up and reforming. Some are getting married, others are disenchanted with life in the cubical farms and moving on to something else, like my son.
There was the Run to Wrigley to deal with; there was still a crowd from the early morning mass jog of thousands in green theme t-shirts. Though the crowd was thinning (many were already enjoying the first beer of the day at the sidewalk cafes on Wrigley Row), but traffic control was still in effect and the cops would not let the cab get close to the building where my son has been living on the 4th floor.
My son walked us over to the Penske truck rental place that was fortuitously located just on the other side of America's coolest baseball venue (with the possible exception of The Fenway in Boston). I was afraid it would be another cab ride, part of this series of one-way trips strung together- but this was easy.
There is something about the sort of people that are renting trucks. Desperation tinged with hope, maybe. Certainly low rent, since the affluent would just hire a crew to do it for them. The young and unexpectedly mobile, moving on.
(Rental Truck at Wrigleyville)
We took possession of one of those big yellow trucks, trading a thousand dollars in electronic money for the right to drive across country with whatever we wanted concealed in the back.
We maneuvered the ungainly thing around the stadium and secured an illegal parking place in front of the building, and I watched as my son and his room-mate man-handled the contents of my son's life down the four floors from their bachelor aerie.
It was pretty emotional, and I contemplated the road ahead as the clouds thickened and droplets of rain began to come down.
The load was settled just at noon, and after a round of Man Hugs, we were weaving over the cracked concrete toward Lakeshore Drive and the Dan Ryan to get out of town. Lake Michigan is still too cold for much intimacy at this time of year, but the people of the Windy City were out and about in force, done with the forced seclusion of the long winter.
We made it out of town and across the hell of the Indiana Turnpike, which has reached the end of its useful life and miles-long chunks of it are being replaced, with Jersey Barriers channeling the aggressive traffic into new and creative lane changes. The truck handled exactly like you would think- a hog- and it was white knuckles across the state that calls itself "The crossroads of America."
It was gray and wet that day, as were the stupefying plain fields of Ohio.
I looked at the clock and checked the time of sunset on the smart phone. I hoped we could get to Pittsburgh before night came, and leave us a fairly light day on Sunday, but it got too scary. The clouds and rain brought darkness sooner, and exit 28 was the best we could do as the giant semis roared past us in the construction zones.
We rose before dawn- well, 50% of us did, and we did manage to get rolling as the first light filtered through the clouds of Western Pennsylvania. We plowed across the worst part of the Penna Turnpike in light traffic. That was good, since in my life there may have been a time when the lanes were not encased in Jersey Barriers, with seemingly random lines chalked across the improvised course of the broken concrete and deep ruts to grab the tires and shake the wheels.
Driving a semi-big truck with tires inflated to 60 psi makes it scary. I mean like almost terrifying.
It was like that in Chicago, and across Indiana, too. And in Northern Virginia. Anyplace there are people and steady traffic we have beaten our infrastructure to pieces, chunks of broken pavement hurled will-nilly from the tires of the even bigger trucks, some hauling two trailers behind. We are doing more to the poor roads than they were ever designed to accommodate, and there is not enough money to fix them until they become nearly impassable.
Anyway, we made it through the fog in the mountains and down to the more gentle climes of Maryland and cut south, down through a smidgen of West Virginia and into the Shenandoah Valley, through Winchester and Front Royal to approach Culpeper County from the west. It is the path that Jackson's foot cavalry took often, using the low mountains as a screen to conceal his movements from the Yankees.
There is a serenity out there on the two-lane blacktop, which doesn’t see much traffic and is in great shape. Little tiny towns like Rock Hill, old well-kept storefronts fronting close on the road, as they would have a century ago, and majestic estates well back on sweeping entrance lanes with massive entrance gates and the little houses of the servants down by the road.
(Rental truck at Refuge Farm)
We fed Heckle the feral cat and unloaded the big stuff from the truck at the farm, and then headed north by one-thirty. We took the fast route, up 29 to I-66, but being a truck, we had to take the Beltway south to route 50 east.
We made it to Big Pink by three, offloading his clothes and bags into the Bluesmobile. Then we re-traced our route to the strip malls of Fairfax to return the truck and stop the clicking rental meter.
My son followed me in the Police Cruiser. More broken concrete, more Jersey barriers. Northern Virginia is a mess.
We made it back, finally, around four. I cooked dinner for the boys, since the older one appeared too late to carry anything but in plenty of time for food, and then they both disappeared just as I was completing the clean up.
Isn't that always the case?
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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