The Grandmother of all Road Trips
We got under way early in the afternoon. Beth had hugged her sister Meg in the back parking lot of Kinko's, after a short, loud, illegal burst of fireworks, Meg, purveyor of fireworks, was looking tough. Beth, not so much, as we climbed into the U-Haul and she pulled the truck away from the curb.
Jo and San were in the car behind us, which was, packed to the gills with the things too fragile to travel in the van, including a beagle and a cat. The plan was to travel to Skaneateles NY that evening, then to Cleveland to pick up Jo's motorcycle, and on through Chicago to Minneapolis, where Beth would unload her stuff, the motorcycle would go from rental trailer to the moving van, and San and Jo would head for Lawrence Kansas.
I would stay on for a few days in Minneapolis, seeing the sights and helping Beth to settle in, then I'd fly back to Vermont.
It was a bittersweet trip. Beth was, and still is, one of my best friends. We met in the early 80s, when in a community chorus. Over the next 15 years, we'd drunk gallons of coffee, and beer, cooked amazing meals together, supported each other through job interviews, and relationship crises, talked politics, taken classes and been on boards together . We'd come up with the four food groups; coffee, chocolate, garlic and beer. A balanced diet of liquids and solids, sweet and savory. We'd dropped a Thanksgiving turkey on the floor and cleaned up the mess together, laughing hysterically and swearing like sailors. And there had been road trips, of course. I'd ridden in Dorothy, the VW bus without working heat, and in Lui the truck, with rocks and a big boom box on the dash, which flew at me when we stopped fast. We'd gone to concerts in the Boston area, yarn stores in Northampton, camping in Province Town. And she'd rescued me from the White River Junction bus station at 1 in the morning.
Then Beth announced her move to Minneapolis, a city where she had friends from college, and figured she might well be able to reinvent herself. Vermont is small for someone who has a lot of expertise in child care, anti-bias curriculum, and is a lesbian. I was appalled that she'd be leaving. She loved Vermont, and she was so woven into the fabric of my life, it was impossible to imagine her hundreds of miles away.
I am not sure whether I asked or she did, but I didn't hesitate to carve out a week from my work schedule to take what I figured would be the mother of all road trips, riding in the moving van to Minneapolis. A road trip with Beth seemed a totally fitting way to send her off, and I also had, as I always seem to, a need to see where she would be planted. I needed to be able to envision my friend shopping at "the Wedge, a big Twin Cities food co-op, or walking by one of the Minneapolis lakes, hanging out with friends like Ann, Beth and David. It wasn't OK to have her disappear into a landscape I didn't know.
And so, on a cloudy day in late September, once again, Beth and I hit the road.
Moving vans do not move quickly. With the weight of two, albeit small, households, our big box truck was lumbering and slow. It ate gas at an alarming rate, somewhere below 15 miles to the gallon, and would not be rushed.
We'd gotten a bit of a late start. Leaving the state you grew up in, not just for a vacation, or a semester of school, but for the foreseeable future, is a big deal. The farewell breakfast ran long, the last minute packing took a while, the hugs for housemates took time, and the fireworks took a little while too. Now on the road at around 3 in the afternoon, we realized that it would take us a little longer to reach Skaneateles than the usual drive time in a car. What with gas stops, slower speed, a quick break for dinner, a few pee breaks, we wouldn't make it there before 10 or so that evening.
From a pay phone at one of the above stops, Beth called her friend Sarah, our host for the night, and was reassured by Sarah, that a late arrival was fine. Fueled by Bonnie Raitt, the Indigo Girls and junk food, we lumbered west across New York State in the gathering dusk.
When we arrived at Sarah's house, late and weary we were able to park in such a way that we didn't have to back out in the morning. We just rolled in, sat up briefly to chat with Sarah, slept, rolled out and had coffee and a light breakfast and hit the road, probably by 8 or so.
There is something about the stretch of Pennsylvania on Route 90. It is not long, and it's pretty straight. In my years of college in Ohio during the late 70s, and again on this trip in the late 90s, it has always been under construction. I fancy that, some 16 years later, it still is. We didn't make Cleveland until about 2:30 in the afternoon, taking 6 and a half hours for a trip that usually takes five hours.
Beth had been hoping to make the motorcycle pick up a quick one, and to get through Chicago before we stopped for the night. As we sat with Jo's friends, hearing long, animated conversations about people and places we didn't know, the minutes stretching to an hour, then two, I could practically feel Beth's tension. finally, we mobilized folks and went to pick up the U-Haul trailer for the motorcycle, and spent the next 45 minutes filling out paperwork, and waiting for the guy who could hook the trailer to our van so that all of its break and turn signal lights worked properly. Then we went to get the motorcycle.
The motorcycle was in a garage down a narrow driveway, about 100 feet off the street. We expected that Jo would just hop on the bike, ride it out to the street and we would wheel it up the ramp
Jo didn't have the keys, so the mountain had to come to Mohamed
Beth has darned good spatial sense, and gradually, with a lot of guidance, got the hang of the odd backward steering needed to move 17 foot moving van and trailer in the desired direction. It took a while, but she did manage to angle into the impossibly tight driveway, back to the shed, where we were then able to muscle the motorcycle onto the trailer. It took a lot of argument, strategizing, angling, and brute strength, to finally get the beast loaded. By now it was close to 7.
Then there was a brief argument about stopping for the night where we were, but Beth's new landlady was expecting her the next evening. We knew that a ten and a half hour trip, under normal circumstances, would take us more like fourteen in the moving van. Beth was still determined to put Chicago behind us before stopping. I'm sure she was also driven by being in limbo, between old home and new. Once she'd left Vermont, she just wanted to get to Minneapolis and be done with it. She can be persuasive, sometimes downright forceful.
We got back in car and moving van just as the sun was going down, and headed west.
I took a turn in the car with San, discovering that she watched TV while she drove, and didn't put the cat in a carrier.
I got back in the moving van with Beth, and we continued on through the dark of the Midwest, listening to country stations on the radio. The miles and hours went by, surreal, unchanging on the flat, featureless highway.
Finally, at a gas/pee break after midnight somewhere in Indiana, we convinced Beth that we were not going to make it across Chicago's huge, congested Dan Ryan Express Way that night. It was not easy to convince her, but we were all exhausted, and decided to book a room in a Super 8.
Picture 4 exhausted women, badly in need of showers and sleep. At one point, I looked around and not one of us had a stitch of clothing on. There was a fair amount of hysterical laughter, lots of running water. I am sure the other people in that motel resented our noisy, late night presence. The noise didn't last long though. Soon we were sound asleep.
Both Beth and I rise early, and after some persuasion, we got Jo and San up, had a hearty, greasy breakfast, heavy on the coffee and got on the road in the early morning sunlight.
We hit the Dan Ryan Express Way at some point after 9 a.m.. The traffic was still heavy, fast, and stupid. How many drivers of little red cars get flattened by big trucks each year, I ask you? I have been told by a few people recently that for some unknown reason, time of day has little to no effect on traffic on the Dan Ryan, morning, noon, or night.
A moving van does not stop on a dime, no matter how close that little red car is to the front bumper. We did not flatten anyone, but by the time we got to the western edge of Chicago, Beth was about willing to do it intentionally. Somehow it seems that the nightmare trip took three hours. Is this possible?
In a parking lot after exiting the Dan Ryan, our little cavalcade broke up for the rest of the trip. Jo and San wanted to be more leisurely. Beth wanted to visit a Vermont friend who lived nearby, then hit the road for the twin cities as soon as possible. We'd meet up with Jo and San again in Minneapolis, where we'd have to unload the damned motorcycle from the trailer, and move it to the moving van, but for now, we went our separate ways.
We stopped in on Tama, grateful for the chance to just stop moving for a while. I am sure Beth's nerves were shot, and a cup of tea and a visit with a good friend helped a lot.
Back on the road, somehow it felt more relaxed. We ambled across the rest of Illinois, into Wisconsin, stopping at the bluffs in the late afternoon, walking among trees and looking at the startling huge stone outcroppings, looking like buttes out west. We figured we would be in Minneapolis by 8 or so.
Then we hit road repair, and not just a short stretch of it, but miles and miles of barrels and concrete barriers, a cruel obstacle course for Beth at the end of three days of hard travelling. Beth reminded me of the two Minnisota seasons, snow removal and road repair, or was that road removal and snow repair. We laughed, briefly, but the note of hysteria creeping in worried us both. The sound track for the rest of our trip was AM radio.
Finally we got to the Twin Cities, and with what must have been the last of her reserves, Beth followed directions to the house in south Minneapolis where she'd be renting a room. We pulled up in front some time well after 10 that evening.
Her new landlady wasn't too friendly. At the moment, it didn't matter much. We were too tired to care, collapsing onto mattresses in the room that would be Beth's.
For the next few days, we would sponge paint her room like a misty forest, unload stuff, go for walks, connect with Beth's Midwest friends and I would get the sense I needed of her new place. Then I would fly home having settled my friend in a community that I could now visualize. We were already sure that the housemate situation was awful, but there were some good friends, some great neighborhoods, and I could see my friend settling in here.
It was quite a trip, but then, what are friends for?
post script. When I ran this by Beth for accuracy, she let me know that she's hoping to move back to Vermont this year. Perhaps she'll have someone else drive a container of her belongings across 6 or 7 states, or maybe I'll be on the van again. Still friends!
We got under way early in the afternoon. Beth had hugged her sister Meg in the back parking lot of Kinko's, after a short, loud, illegal burst of fireworks, Meg, purveyor of fireworks, was looking tough. Beth, not so much, as we climbed into the U-Haul and she pulled the truck away from the curb.
Jo and San were in the car behind us, which was, packed to the gills with the things too fragile to travel in the van, including a beagle and a cat. The plan was to travel to Skaneateles NY that evening, then to Cleveland to pick up Jo's motorcycle, and on through Chicago to Minneapolis, where Beth would unload her stuff, the motorcycle would go from rental trailer to the moving van, and San and Jo would head for Lawrence Kansas.
I would stay on for a few days in Minneapolis, seeing the sights and helping Beth to settle in, then I'd fly back to Vermont.
It was a bittersweet trip. Beth was, and still is, one of my best friends. We met in the early 80s, when in a community chorus. Over the next 15 years, we'd drunk gallons of coffee, and beer, cooked amazing meals together, supported each other through job interviews, and relationship crises, talked politics, taken classes and been on boards together . We'd come up with the four food groups; coffee, chocolate, garlic and beer. A balanced diet of liquids and solids, sweet and savory. We'd dropped a Thanksgiving turkey on the floor and cleaned up the mess together, laughing hysterically and swearing like sailors. And there had been road trips, of course. I'd ridden in Dorothy, the VW bus without working heat, and in Lui the truck, with rocks and a big boom box on the dash, which flew at me when we stopped fast. We'd gone to concerts in the Boston area, yarn stores in Northampton, camping in Province Town. And she'd rescued me from the White River Junction bus station at 1 in the morning.
Then Beth announced her move to Minneapolis, a city where she had friends from college, and figured she might well be able to reinvent herself. Vermont is small for someone who has a lot of expertise in child care, anti-bias curriculum, and is a lesbian. I was appalled that she'd be leaving. She loved Vermont, and she was so woven into the fabric of my life, it was impossible to imagine her hundreds of miles away.
I am not sure whether I asked or she did, but I didn't hesitate to carve out a week from my work schedule to take what I figured would be the mother of all road trips, riding in the moving van to Minneapolis. A road trip with Beth seemed a totally fitting way to send her off, and I also had, as I always seem to, a need to see where she would be planted. I needed to be able to envision my friend shopping at "the Wedge, a big Twin Cities food co-op, or walking by one of the Minneapolis lakes, hanging out with friends like Ann, Beth and David. It wasn't OK to have her disappear into a landscape I didn't know.
And so, on a cloudy day in late September, once again, Beth and I hit the road.
Moving vans do not move quickly. With the weight of two, albeit small, households, our big box truck was lumbering and slow. It ate gas at an alarming rate, somewhere below 15 miles to the gallon, and would not be rushed.
We'd gotten a bit of a late start. Leaving the state you grew up in, not just for a vacation, or a semester of school, but for the foreseeable future, is a big deal. The farewell breakfast ran long, the last minute packing took a while, the hugs for housemates took time, and the fireworks took a little while too. Now on the road at around 3 in the afternoon, we realized that it would take us a little longer to reach Skaneateles than the usual drive time in a car. What with gas stops, slower speed, a quick break for dinner, a few pee breaks, we wouldn't make it there before 10 or so that evening.
From a pay phone at one of the above stops, Beth called her friend Sarah, our host for the night, and was reassured by Sarah, that a late arrival was fine. Fueled by Bonnie Raitt, the Indigo Girls and junk food, we lumbered west across New York State in the gathering dusk.
When we arrived at Sarah's house, late and weary we were able to park in such a way that we didn't have to back out in the morning. We just rolled in, sat up briefly to chat with Sarah, slept, rolled out and had coffee and a light breakfast and hit the road, probably by 8 or so.
There is something about the stretch of Pennsylvania on Route 90. It is not long, and it's pretty straight. In my years of college in Ohio during the late 70s, and again on this trip in the late 90s, it has always been under construction. I fancy that, some 16 years later, it still is. We didn't make Cleveland until about 2:30 in the afternoon, taking 6 and a half hours for a trip that usually takes five hours.
Beth had been hoping to make the motorcycle pick up a quick one, and to get through Chicago before we stopped for the night. As we sat with Jo's friends, hearing long, animated conversations about people and places we didn't know, the minutes stretching to an hour, then two, I could practically feel Beth's tension. finally, we mobilized folks and went to pick up the U-Haul trailer for the motorcycle, and spent the next 45 minutes filling out paperwork, and waiting for the guy who could hook the trailer to our van so that all of its break and turn signal lights worked properly. Then we went to get the motorcycle.
The motorcycle was in a garage down a narrow driveway, about 100 feet off the street. We expected that Jo would just hop on the bike, ride it out to the street and we would wheel it up the ramp
Jo didn't have the keys, so the mountain had to come to Mohamed
Beth has darned good spatial sense, and gradually, with a lot of guidance, got the hang of the odd backward steering needed to move 17 foot moving van and trailer in the desired direction. It took a while, but she did manage to angle into the impossibly tight driveway, back to the shed, where we were then able to muscle the motorcycle onto the trailer. It took a lot of argument, strategizing, angling, and brute strength, to finally get the beast loaded. By now it was close to 7.
Then there was a brief argument about stopping for the night where we were, but Beth's new landlady was expecting her the next evening. We knew that a ten and a half hour trip, under normal circumstances, would take us more like fourteen in the moving van. Beth was still determined to put Chicago behind us before stopping. I'm sure she was also driven by being in limbo, between old home and new. Once she'd left Vermont, she just wanted to get to Minneapolis and be done with it. She can be persuasive, sometimes downright forceful.
We got back in car and moving van just as the sun was going down, and headed west.
I took a turn in the car with San, discovering that she watched TV while she drove, and didn't put the cat in a carrier.
I got back in the moving van with Beth, and we continued on through the dark of the Midwest, listening to country stations on the radio. The miles and hours went by, surreal, unchanging on the flat, featureless highway.
Finally, at a gas/pee break after midnight somewhere in Indiana, we convinced Beth that we were not going to make it across Chicago's huge, congested Dan Ryan Express Way that night. It was not easy to convince her, but we were all exhausted, and decided to book a room in a Super 8.
Picture 4 exhausted women, badly in need of showers and sleep. At one point, I looked around and not one of us had a stitch of clothing on. There was a fair amount of hysterical laughter, lots of running water. I am sure the other people in that motel resented our noisy, late night presence. The noise didn't last long though. Soon we were sound asleep.
Both Beth and I rise early, and after some persuasion, we got Jo and San up, had a hearty, greasy breakfast, heavy on the coffee and got on the road in the early morning sunlight.
We hit the Dan Ryan Express Way at some point after 9 a.m.. The traffic was still heavy, fast, and stupid. How many drivers of little red cars get flattened by big trucks each year, I ask you? I have been told by a few people recently that for some unknown reason, time of day has little to no effect on traffic on the Dan Ryan, morning, noon, or night.
A moving van does not stop on a dime, no matter how close that little red car is to the front bumper. We did not flatten anyone, but by the time we got to the western edge of Chicago, Beth was about willing to do it intentionally. Somehow it seems that the nightmare trip took three hours. Is this possible?
In a parking lot after exiting the Dan Ryan, our little cavalcade broke up for the rest of the trip. Jo and San wanted to be more leisurely. Beth wanted to visit a Vermont friend who lived nearby, then hit the road for the twin cities as soon as possible. We'd meet up with Jo and San again in Minneapolis, where we'd have to unload the damned motorcycle from the trailer, and move it to the moving van, but for now, we went our separate ways.
We stopped in on Tama, grateful for the chance to just stop moving for a while. I am sure Beth's nerves were shot, and a cup of tea and a visit with a good friend helped a lot.
Back on the road, somehow it felt more relaxed. We ambled across the rest of Illinois, into Wisconsin, stopping at the bluffs in the late afternoon, walking among trees and looking at the startling huge stone outcroppings, looking like buttes out west. We figured we would be in Minneapolis by 8 or so.
Then we hit road repair, and not just a short stretch of it, but miles and miles of barrels and concrete barriers, a cruel obstacle course for Beth at the end of three days of hard travelling. Beth reminded me of the two Minnisota seasons, snow removal and road repair, or was that road removal and snow repair. We laughed, briefly, but the note of hysteria creeping in worried us both. The sound track for the rest of our trip was AM radio.
Finally we got to the Twin Cities, and with what must have been the last of her reserves, Beth followed directions to the house in south Minneapolis where she'd be renting a room. We pulled up in front some time well after 10 that evening.
Her new landlady wasn't too friendly. At the moment, it didn't matter much. We were too tired to care, collapsing onto mattresses in the room that would be Beth's.
For the next few days, we would sponge paint her room like a misty forest, unload stuff, go for walks, connect with Beth's Midwest friends and I would get the sense I needed of her new place. Then I would fly home having settled my friend in a community that I could now visualize. We were already sure that the housemate situation was awful, but there were some good friends, some great neighborhoods, and I could see my friend settling in here.
It was quite a trip, but then, what are friends for?
post script. When I ran this by Beth for accuracy, she let me know that she's hoping to move back to Vermont this year. Perhaps she'll have someone else drive a container of her belongings across 6 or 7 states, or maybe I'll be on the van again. Still friends!
Still friends! Hard to imagine moving across the country without you on board, Susan.
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