Start out getting to the Beltway on a late Friday afternoon.. At first from down US-50, later (when I got my head out of my ass) via I-66. Then the Beltway around to I-270. Around exit 22, the cell phone would drop out and start roaming, at a time when a roaming call might well have a material impact on whether I could make rent. But I had to have it on anyway, because I wanted to live a life where I needed a mobile phone.
Then onto I-70 west, headed toward Pennsylvania. After about two and a half hours on the road, down the ramps into Breezewood – the Las Vegas of Central Pennsylvania, the Town of Motels, and technically the home of stoplights on I-70 before it joins the Pennsylvania Turnpike. At this point, it’s been about two and a half hours, most likely, and it’s time to stop. And it’s not like Breezewood lacks for truck stops. Break the seal, take a leak, stretch your legs, buy some more Dr Pepper (and if you’re really feeling weird, maybe some cheap-ass cigars with wood tips), and basically load up for the next round….which is going to be four hours on the turnpike.
The Allegheny Tunnel is a checkpoint, looming out of a mountain – and on a snowy night, its lights through the precipitation may be the first real sign that oh God it’s really snowing out there, not like a dusting that shuts a Southern city down and empties the Piggly Wiggly of bread and milk, that’s REAL SNOW. And after that, it’s just a drive. Maybe stop somewhere around Cranberry at the service plaza – there’s Burger King there, maybe a late night double bacon cheeseburger and some more Dr Pepper will help finish the push on to Ohio, where eventually the turnpike will change places with I-80 and you’ll free-roll from I-76 to I-77.
Seven hours one way, with stops, and you have to do it with stops. And tolls. If you really go balls out after work, or your boss lets you slide early, you might make it by 12:30 AM, but it’s more likely to be 1.
And then, about forty hours later, you’ll set out the opposite direction around 5 PM in hopes of making it home by midnight. It’s dark by the time you reach the Pennsylvania border, counting the change in your tray to make sure you have enough to get by, trying to calculate whether you need gas at the service plazas or can wait until you’re back past Breezewood the other way. Fries for dinner, probably, and then the Allegheny Tunnel from the opposite direction, this time across a long and broad and barren landscape…then down through the mountain passes to Breezewood. And from there, you’re still looking at over two hours home.
The problem with driving almost fourteen hours in a weekend by yourself is it leaves you alone with your thoughts. The wrong tapes in the car stereo will only feed the introspection and melancholy, especially if your life has been summarily imploded and completely rearranged in the last eight months, and there’s only so much distraction to get from the occasional clear-channel-AM broadcast of an NFL game. There’s a real danger in getting too much into your own head…a little luck and a little insanity are important in life, but only a fool relies on either.