It's time for the second installment of my Ann Arbor trip! Where did I leave off?
Oh right, we had just climbed into the car for what was supposed to be a 13-hour trip. (Imagine me saying that like the line from Gilligan's Island, "three hour tour....") We got up and out around 6:00 so that we could beat the Boston rush hour traffic, as well as the impending snowstorm. By the time we packed up the rental car, though, there were already flurries in the air. The weather wasn't exactly sticking to its plan.
The flurries continued as we turned onto I-90, which we would take all the way across Massachusetts, all the way across New York State, and southwest along Lake Erie through Pennsylvania and Ohio, before finally turning onto US-23 in Toledo, which would lead us straight north to downtown Ann Arbor. In other words, the navigation for this trip was super easy. Two turns to go 804 miles. Plus, Colin and I had made the reverse of this same drive two and a half years before in a UHaul, so it should have been easy.
As it turns out, though, Massachusetts does not believe in plowing its highways. The interstate (the Mass Pike! Quite possibly the busiest highway in the state!) had only a single lane plowed in each direction, and even that was slushy. There wasn't much traffic, but because we were all slogging through slush from storms past, we were going about 45 miles per hour. Colin and I were afraid to talk to each other about anything driving-related for fear that one of us would state the obvious--that this trip was going to take way longer than 13 hours. Would we get to Ann Arbor in time to meet our friend for dinner as planned? Would we get there in time to go salsa dancing at the nightclub where we had our first date? And - worst of all - would we have to do this awful drive again on Sunday??
I think we were both about to cry out of frustration by the time we hit Syracuse more than six hours later. And then, as if magic, the flurries stopped, the roads cleared, and the sun came out. It was as if Syracuse hadn't seen snow in weeks. Traffic picked up to a totally normal highway speed, and we could finally breath a sigh of relief. Let the record reflect that Massachusetts is a great state in many ways, but they do a shockingly bad job of plowing their interstates.
From Syracuse, the drive was easy. We listened to audio books, sang along to the radio (the song of the trip seemed to be Katy Perry's "Roar," which played no less than five times), and just enjoyed chatting with each other. Every hour or so, one of us would exclaim, "Hey! I remember that landmark! Do you remember when we saw that on the move from Ann Arbor...." It's remarkable how familiar the drive felt. And, in a way, it felt like going home. You can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can't take the Midwest out of the girl!
We gave up on our dinner plans and ate at a Panera outside of Toledo. At that point, we were practically bouncing in our seats with excitement! We were gonna make it! Maybe even in time for salsa dancing! Around 10:00 - sixteen hours after leaving Boston - we pulled into the parking lot behind our friend Kinsey's apartment, where we were staying for the night. We were both exhausted but grinning. We were back. We were "home."
< to be continued >
Oh right, we had just climbed into the car for what was supposed to be a 13-hour trip. (Imagine me saying that like the line from Gilligan's Island, "three hour tour....") We got up and out around 6:00 so that we could beat the Boston rush hour traffic, as well as the impending snowstorm. By the time we packed up the rental car, though, there were already flurries in the air. The weather wasn't exactly sticking to its plan.
The flurries continued as we turned onto I-90, which we would take all the way across Massachusetts, all the way across New York State, and southwest along Lake Erie through Pennsylvania and Ohio, before finally turning onto US-23 in Toledo, which would lead us straight north to downtown Ann Arbor. In other words, the navigation for this trip was super easy. Two turns to go 804 miles. Plus, Colin and I had made the reverse of this same drive two and a half years before in a UHaul, so it should have been easy.
As it turns out, though, Massachusetts does not believe in plowing its highways. The interstate (the Mass Pike! Quite possibly the busiest highway in the state!) had only a single lane plowed in each direction, and even that was slushy. There wasn't much traffic, but because we were all slogging through slush from storms past, we were going about 45 miles per hour. Colin and I were afraid to talk to each other about anything driving-related for fear that one of us would state the obvious--that this trip was going to take way longer than 13 hours. Would we get to Ann Arbor in time to meet our friend for dinner as planned? Would we get there in time to go salsa dancing at the nightclub where we had our first date? And - worst of all - would we have to do this awful drive again on Sunday??
I think we were both about to cry out of frustration by the time we hit Syracuse more than six hours later. And then, as if magic, the flurries stopped, the roads cleared, and the sun came out. It was as if Syracuse hadn't seen snow in weeks. Traffic picked up to a totally normal highway speed, and we could finally breath a sigh of relief. Let the record reflect that Massachusetts is a great state in many ways, but they do a shockingly bad job of plowing their interstates.
From Syracuse, the drive was easy. We listened to audio books, sang along to the radio (the song of the trip seemed to be Katy Perry's "Roar," which played no less than five times), and just enjoyed chatting with each other. Every hour or so, one of us would exclaim, "Hey! I remember that landmark! Do you remember when we saw that on the move from Ann Arbor...." It's remarkable how familiar the drive felt. And, in a way, it felt like going home. You can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can't take the Midwest out of the girl!
We gave up on our dinner plans and ate at a Panera outside of Toledo. At that point, we were practically bouncing in our seats with excitement! We were gonna make it! Maybe even in time for salsa dancing! Around 10:00 - sixteen hours after leaving Boston - we pulled into the parking lot behind our friend Kinsey's apartment, where we were staying for the night. We were both exhausted but grinning. We were back. We were "home."
< to be continued >
No comments:
Post a Comment