Cross Country, Part 1

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I've long since returned from my globetrotting Down Under. After five months of traipsing about Fiji, New Zealand and Australia I returned to the States broke, tired and extremely dusty. I spent close to two months recuperating on a couch at home in New Jersey.

Occasionally I would stir myself out of my cable television induced stupor to visit college friends in Boston. My biggest complaint while travelling was the painfully absence of close friends, so to be surrounded by them again for a few weeks was what I had been aching for over several months. It's a cliche for a reason: there is no place like home. Of course, after a few weeks of couch surfing New England, my adventure-bug fired up once again. Luckily walking through Harvard Square in Cambridge, I had spontaneously agreed to return to a summer job in San Francisco as a camp counselor. In reality, I believe that I unconsciously realized that driving out to the West Coast would serve as just another excuse to put on my pack and buy a new camping stove.

I gave myself two weeks to get out to the Bay Area, another two weeks to find an apartment before camp started and the rest of my life to figure out what I would do after camp ended. I took advantage of an excellent REI sale, packed up two shopping bags full of dry bulk staples and set off in my Toyota Camry. Go west, lead outdoor instructor!

From New Jersey, I started my drive headed west on the truck laden Route 80 where every third vehicle has 18 wheels and perpetual construction whittles three lanes into barely two. High on the euphoria of being alone and travelling, I felt strong and confident driving around the trucks that were travelling a 55 mph to every car's 65 mph speed limit. I'm not sure why Pennsylvania has these rules but perhaps after you read my story, you might enlighten me.

Cruising along, I was belting out songs and carefully riding the narrow lanes between powerful trucks and the concrete median. While routinely passing another tanker, I noticed out of the corner of my eye the wheels of the truck drifting into my lane. Momentarily stunned, I gripped my steering wheel with steel fingers and edged as close as I would dare to my left lane line. Sliding my palm down the wheel, I started furiously honking at the possessed truck driver.

Incredibly, it kept hedging over until this monster it was taking up half my lane! I inched my car towards the median blurring past at 70 mph not wanting slow down and be caught in the back wheels of the truck. The scene from Fast and Furious where a flashy Paul Walker driven sports car dives under a tank between the sets of wheels flashed through my brain. I grimaced and braced myself for impact, choosing to be hit by the truck instead of the concrete. I heard a loud crunch and tearing sound. I started to shout expletives at the anonymous driver as if he or she was sitting next to me, as if it would have made a difference. Seconds, an eternity, later the truck started to move back into the right lane. I exhaled and looked at my limbs, my passenger seat, my car... It was all still there. Almost.

I glanced over at where my passenger side rear view mirror normally sat. Instead of the mirror and image of the car behind me, I saw shards of plastic and electronics hanging from the body of the car. Shock started to wear off and were replaced by Rage and Fury boiling up from my insides. I took it out on my horn. I was no longer the tiny Camry in danger of becoming roadkill. I was going to make this truck pull over if I had to tail it down to Florida. Luckily, the truck took off the next exit. I sped to pass it and switched lanes to pull directly in front of it. I flashed my hazards, honked my horn, rolled down my window and waved the truck to pull over.

Both of us pulled over on a local county road near a high school. Before I shut off my engine to walk over to the truck, I took a deep breath and vowed that I would not be hysterical. Breathing slowly and clenching my hands together, I approached the cab of the tractor trailer. The door opened and a short, overweight redheaded woman with glasses eased herself down from the passenger seat. Confused and losing my nerve by the second, I stammered, "Uh, is everything alright in there?" She considered me for a second. "Why yes, is everything alright with you?" My mouth was open but no intelligible words were forming.

Eventually, her husband, an equally rotund man with glasses and a patchy mop top made his way to us. He asked why I had pulled them over, in an incredulous tone. I walked him over to my car where it looked like a shark had leaped out of the Atlantic and taken a chunk out of my Toyota. He doubted it at first. "You know, if I did hit you, I didn't see you at all. I check my blindspots. You say you honked at me? I didn't hear that either." I lost it. My incoherence was now bonafide shrill panic and I spewed that he almost killed me.

We made it over to the nearby gas station where he bought a disposable camera and I whipped out mine to take pictures. I took pictures of his licence plate number too, just in case. As he viewed the damage and compared the height of my ex-mirror to the ladder on the tank of his truck, it started to hit him that he could have in fact done serious damage.

"You know, I'm sorry if I did do that. I can only remember switching lanes once and that was to move over for a broken pickup truck on the right shoulder." He shook his head, spoke slowly and looked at my mirror again. I got their insurance information, shook hands with them both and they pulled away. I sat on a economy pack of water bottles in front of the gas station and for the first time started sobbing. I look at it again now and I realize how lucky I was that he moved back into his lane when he did. He was inches away from hitting the body of the car. But luckily there was no harm, no foul. I pulled myself together, filed a police report. I managed to drive a few more hours. Emotionally exhausted, I called it quits at a campsite just over the Ohio border.

There, I met an older woman who was obviously very pleased to have a camper stay in her vacant tent plots. She told me she'd been working since 7 am. That day they'd had not one but two high schools visiting the lake and she looked exhausted. I smiled and told her that I'd had a tornado of a day myself.

She paused, squinted and said, "Hey you seem like a girl with a good sense of humor. Let me tell you a joke I heard the other day at the bank." Gesturing towards herself, she said, "It's about old age and technology. There were two younger ladies and an older woman at a sauna. They sat in the steam relaxing when they heard a buzzing noise. One of the young women smiled and excused herself. 'I'm sorry that's my pager.' She saw the looks of disbelief on the other two women's faces. Explaining, 'It's just this microchip that's embedded right here in my arm. Excuse me.' She left to answer the page and came back.

"After another few minutes, the women heard a ringing noise. This time the other young woman reached up to her ear. Shrugging, she mouthed, 'It's my phone' and ducked out of the steam room. She came back and told them she had a tiny phone the size of a hearing aid inside her ear. The young women settled back into their steam but the older woman seemed a little miffed and dissatisfied.

"She felt offended that these young beautiful women were flaunting their technological advancements. Not to be outdone, she suddenly left the sauna. After ten minutes, she returned. As the passed the young women, they were astonished and embarrassed to see sheets of toilet paper trailing out of the elderly woman's behind. Noticing the young ladies' stares, the elder woman jumped in exclamation and explained 'Oh my! I'm sorry, please excuse me. That's just my imbedded fax machine.'"

In the grand scheme of things, I think my day was just about even after that.



In the next few days I'll continue writing about my drive to San Francisco.

Travel well,
Meesh

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