Vic Socotra

08 October 2009

Seven Eighty-Three

(View From the Bluesmobile Dash)

I don’t know if it would have changed my mind any. It was the right thing to have a car up here, and driving my own made things a lot less complex.

Not one TSA screener asked to look in my back filled with electronic devices- Blackberry, cell phone, iPod, laptop- and it is nice to travel with your own reliable cooler in the spacious back seat, filled with sandwiches and soft drinks

There was no cab fare to the ai rport, or the alternative of the meter running at the vast garage at Reagan National or Dulles.

Plus, there was always the problem of the car at the distant end. It is relatively cheap to fly to Detroit from Washington, but the small ai leg up to the little city by the bay always meant sitting around for hours, and the rental car prices at Traverse City or Pelston, the regional airports, are steep.

My brother has had Mom pick him up before, and that is no longer a good option. While they have two cars, there is no livery service to get to them, or back to the airport when the visit is done.

The way that seemed to work out best was to rent a car at Detroit Metro and drive the two hundred and fifty miles from there. It was inefficient, and took most of the day.

This time, lack of prior planning left me with the simple choice. Drag the bag down the hall, punch the elevator button, and ride down to the garage. Dump the bag in the trunk.

Then drive home.

For some reason the number “six hundred” stuck in my brain, and for planning purposes that is what I thought the mileage was, west in Virginia to the Potomac Crossing at Point of Rocks. North into Maryland, the way Bobby Lee did it twice, stopping at Antietam once and Gettysburg the second time.

Then west into the Mountains of Pennsylvania, following the Turnpike’s orignal path on the roadbed of the Southern Pennsylvania Railroad, on to Fort Duchesne, or Pittsburgh now, where Braddock fell, and then into the Buckeye State at East Portal.

A hundred or so miles sliding below Cleveland, a left at Toledo and there is Michigan.

Voila!

Figure an average speed made good on a weekday of sixty miles per hour, allowing for a gas stop every four hours, that should make about an eleven-hour trip, and at this time of year, possible almost entirely in daylight.

This is not a big deal, mind you. Not like the epic trips of youth- jumping into a sedan in Ann Arbor and driving straight through to Salt Lake were endurance tests, fueled with all manner of things and became desert hall ucinations on the way to paradise.

Then there were Middle-Aged trips, ferrying cars from the East Coast to the West and back again, workmanlike four-day odysseys of up to a thousand miles per day across the vast plains, horizon down to the shoulder on each side.

This would have been a piece of cake. The weather was gorgeous in the horse-country of Virginia and Maryland. The trees were just brushed with color, and reports of the usual traffic problems faded astern with the signal of the radio.

The colors of the trees intensified with the altitude on the central plain of Pennsylvania, edging past the crash site of the 9/11 heroes. Then brown fields in Ohio and rain, breaking out into the sunshine again west of Cleveland.

The air from the window was crisp. Too early for snow, traffic light, this was a day for eating miles.

If it had not been for the pernicious wind hammering the Bluesmobile with gusts to fifty knots (that from Maryland Country Radio) I got a hamburger and coffee at the second gas stop and in mid-afternoon got that timeless sense of unreality that comes with the pooling of blood in the gut, and the flatness of the land.

Too far, I thought. Parts of my legs and butt were going numb at different times. The Cruise Control was a blunt instrument, but it allowed me to move my legs and let the circulation come back with needling pain.

Heading north from Detroit from the Ohio Line I realized that was another hundred miles, or close to it, and nearly three hundred beyond.

I glanced at the clock on the dashboard, and realized that this was not a six hundred mile drive, but closer to eight. How could I have forgotten?

I pushed down on the accelerator, and raced northward with the declining sun through Flint, Saginaw and across the fabulous Zilwaukee Bridge to Bay City before the nose came around to the northwest through Pinconning and Clare and West Branch.

The sunglasses came off there, and night swaddled the police cruiser in the construction zone at Grayling, and it was full night with the “low fuel” light at Gaylord for the last fueling.

No point in hurrying now. No point in driving beyond the reach of the headlights, since the deer are out now, and leaving the comfort of the interstate I was in their country.

No big deals on the last thirty-eight miles. I know most of those roads by brail anyway, Thumb Lake Road to US I-131 and up the bluff where the sparkling blue waters were rendered inky black by the night.

The lights twinkled across the Bay at Harbor Springs as I eased the big cruiser into the driveway at the house overlooking the water.

Mom and Dad were waiting at the door, the warm light of home flooding out around there. I glanced down at the trip meter.

Seven Eighty-three, on the nose.

There really is no easy way to get home, I thought, and climbed stiffly out of the car to talk to my Dad.

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