At one point early in the trip I told Chris that we'd miss our U-Haul van once we dropped it off somewhere along the eastern seaboard. Once there, we found that I was wrong. We were ecstatic at the prospect of giving that van back. The beast had a 50 gallon tank and got about six miles to the gallon.
The Toyota Prius gets 47 miles to the gallon. Our van got six.
That's three $200 fill-ups from Oak Park to Long Island.
As if that weren't enough, towing Chris' car and his embarrassment of possessions added enough weight that the van's wheel well emanated a burning smell. Not a fire burn, but a grinding tire-melting burn. The kind of burn that we might've been able to prevent if we had any idea what we were doing.
It doesn't seem smart to let absolutely anyone drive vehicles this cumbersome. It seems inevitable that something would start burning.
Despite the smell, we continued on our trip. I can't always whack the side of a television to straighten out the picture. I can't always click the refresh button to make the Internet speed up and I can't always ignore obvious deficiencies with my car until the trip is over.
These things can't happen all the time, but they can happen every once in a while and it's important to acknowledge that this was one of those times. The burning smell is U-Haul's problem now.
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White Knuckle sidebar #2
Fill-up stations are ripping a page from the coffee house handbook.
Small, you'll note, both rhymes with and is antonymous of tall. Check most Dr. Seuss books to clarify the differences.
This is not new territory. People have been bitching about the English translation of venti long before I added to the throng. It's not the coffee shops I'm upset with, but the current shell game gas stations (like Shell Oil ironically enough) are playing with consumers. When I learned to count from that "Sesame Street" vampire, I was taught that the number one came first, followed by two, three and so-on. Gas station owners don't follow these patterns.
Unleaded gasoline is no longer the simplest most basic petrol. There's unleaded plus, premium unleaded, maximum unleaded, kickass unleaded, diet unleaded, unleaded-palooza and ethanoltini. These adjectives all describe the relative concentration of ethanol in each gas, but not their relative price.
Most pumps hold the cheapest gas on the left, most expensive gas on the right. Every once in a while, there's some turd gas station owner that organizes the various grades of gasoline like an Olympic podium.
Silver, gold, bronze.
Unleaded, premium, maximum.
Premium sounds better than unleaded doesn't it? Premium is like unleaded only slightly better. Maybe it's mixed with fairy dust and unicorn giggles, who knows? It stands to reason that the more impressive the adjective in front of unleaded, the more it's going to cost. Isn't it illegal to use common sense against the consumer? Then there's maximum. Maximum should be better than premium, right? Maximum is at the ceiling of quality, otherwise it wouldn't be called maximum unleaded. It'd be called modicum unleaded.
One, two, three turns into two, one, three. Small turns into tall. Regular turns into unleaded turns into premium.
And I turn into one angry dupe standing at the pump.
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Nine hundred miles on the road and I realize it's much easier to drive the White Knuckle Express than to sit shotgun in it. The White Knuckle Express got it's name because even though Chris and I would be inwardly relaxed, our concentration while maneuvering the gigantic van through interstate after interstate was so intense that our hands would hurt from gripping the wheel. The driver's life hangs upon the balance of his or her own concentration. You sleep, you die.
Sitting shotgun at four in the morning leaves little for the tired mind to think about other than falling asleep. Before the trip starts, it's understood that the person sitting shotgunner controls the music and entertains the driver so that the driver can do his job, which is both to get closer to the final destination and not kill anyone in the process.
As a driver, I did my job. As a shotgunner, I'm afraid I left much to be desired. I spilled Mountain Dew in the door panel, which left a sloshing wave of yellow liquid until eastern Pennsylvania. I also continuously scuffed my head against the headrest of my seat, nodding off and straightening up. In my head I pictured Chris and me singing church songs all the way to Long Island. In reality I spent 300 miles in a transient state of conciousness praying the van would break down just so we'd have time to sleep in peace.
We were bright eyed and bushy bottomed by the time we arrived in Queens. It was about 1:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, nearly 16 hours after leaving Oak Park and the fun was really beginning.
By fun, I don't mean fun. I mostly mean tears and toil.
to be concluded...
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