Albany. Oh, where to
begin?
Regular readers know a lot about me, probably too much. What
the heck - I'm only going around once, right?
Here's one thing you know about me:
Yesterday I drove to Albany by myself to join the SNHU cheering section
to watch my son and his lacrosse team crush division II conference rivals the
College of St. Rose. They're not my
son's team's most ardent enemy (that would probably be Merrimack College after
SNHU knocked them from the NCAA playoffs last season with an unexpected
victory), but it was an important conference game for both teams. Besides, I like taking game photographs and
posting them to the Laxpower website.
The team can live on in Cyberspace for all of eternity if it were solely
up to me.
Let me walk you through my day because reliving it over and
over and over surely must be some kind of Hell for me, and lord knows I don't
want to be there alone. From the
beginning (and not in an Emerson Lake and Palmer kind of way)…
I have already printed out my route via MapQuest, packed
food and drinks enough to keep me awake and alert on the trip home, programmed
the GPS with the comedian who tells me such things as "Turn around when
possible -- It is advisable to turn the whole car around, not just yourself in
the front seat," gassed up the tank, gotten lots of $1 bills for tolls,
packed extra coats and gloves and socks in case of weather changes, juiced up
the cell phone battery, and cleaned the car windshield.
In short, I am ready; just me and Billy C, my GPS.
Oh, and Floyd.
Yup, here's the second thing my regular readers know (way
too much) about me: I have a
softball-sized uterine fibroid named Floyd.
Floyd the Fibroid. And every so
often, Floyd wreaks havoc on my body, my clothing, and my pain levels. After eight weeks of being a good little
fibroid, Floyd has decided that today is the best day to visit. Joy! So in addition to everything else I have
packed, I now must add medication, a huge bag of industrial-strength feminine
products normally only talked about on television during daytime talk shows,
extra clothing in case of an arterial bleed, and the directions to every
possible rest stop along the way there and home. In addition to worrying about finding the
lacrosse field, I now must also worry about whether or not I will need
emergency medical attention over the next twelve hours.
Just so you know, if
anyone starts singing "I Enjoy Being a Girl" from Flower Drum Song, I will hunt you down
like a wild dog and put you on a spit over a raging campfire. Just so you know, I mean.
I decide to skip route 290 through Worcester, figuring
Saturday traffic plus the start of a long holiday weekend in Massachusetts (and
Maine) along with the state's April vacation, probably means clogged
lanes.
Floyd reminds me that he's still in control of my plans, so
I stop at the Charlton service area and make a pit stop. No EMT's needed yet. I debate buying something salty to eat and decide that I really have packed enough
food to survive a month on the road, so I'm back out on I-90, which is
surprisingly empty.
I realize that I've forgotten my MP3 player (don't judge
me! I'm not an Apple supporter), so I
start flicking around the radio stations.
Eventually I find the Red Sox game broadcast via some station I've never
heard of before. I must admit that much
as I like Joe Castiglione, he doesn't add much drama to the game. Half the time I don't even realize the inning
has started because his voice is as monotonous when he's just chatting as it is
when he's calling the game. As I climb
into the mountains, I lose the station several times and resort to skimming
channels like I'm surfing the television.
Mostly I get a lot of static. The
hills apparently are not alive with the sound of music out here.
I skip the Ludlow and Blandford rest stops, but I pass by
the area of I-90 where years ago coming back from the Am-Can Junior Judo
Tournament we passed a very old man on a motorcycle wearing a v-neck white men's
t-shirt and riding through the rain. The
one thing we noticed then was that his flabby arms were flying backward from
the bones, creating a soaring effect, and we nicknamed him Bat-Wing Man. I smile as I drive through, westbound and
away from the rocky cliffs that line the eastbound lane. Aha, I
smile to myself, Bat Wing Pass. Good times, good times. I realize as I near Lee that I should
probably give Floyd another check, maybe gas up the car before I cross the
border to pay god-knows-what for New York prices.
While I'm at the Lee stop, I realize that I'll be way too
early to Albany if I keep this pace, which would be fine normally, but now I'm
on Potty Alert because of Floyd. My
whole day is now revolving around toilet facilities. I decide to indulge my inner child and get
myself a small sundae from Mickey D's.
While sitting there, the Billerica contingency (well, half of it)
arrives, and the two women and I all join each other in the bathrooms and have
a good laugh about being ahead of time for the game. I refuel my car, but the receipt refuses to
print. I leave the station wondering if
maybe my debit card is now refueling everyone after me. Oh
well. Sue them later, if necessary. And I'm off again, just me, Billy C my GPS,
and Floyd.
I pay the $2.10 toll to leave my home state, and I enter
into the No-Man's land that is the brief part of Mass-a-York, that un-tolled
area that combines the two states, No
sooner do I cross into New York that I am passed by a Rhode Island car doing
about ninety. I look down and realize
that I am traveling seventy-five in a sixty-five mph zone, and I have no idea
what the limit is with the New York state police. I know in New Hampshire you can pretty much
get away with seventy-five, but anything above that is a guaranteed ticket if
you have out-of-state plates. No sooner
do I slow myself down to about seventy-one when I see the NY statie. He is in the best hiding spot of all time;
never have I seen a better spot nor a better position. He is around a blind turn, hiding under a rock
cliff, in the center, facing parallel to both directions so he can bag anyone
on either side who comes along. By this
time, I am again alone on I-90, so when he pulls out directly behind me, I am
deflated. He travels behind me for about
eight seconds then hits turbo, and I do mean turbo. I hear a noise behind
me like an airplane jet engine on the funny cars at the speedway, and the
cruiser, lights flashing, shoots by me at mach speed as if I am completely
stagnant and he is on the Autobahn. As I
creep around the next corner, I see he has bagged the Rhode Island driver who
left me in the dust moments before. Too bad, so sad. 
Albany is reasonably close to Massachusetts, maybe
forty-five miles from the border, so I weave around I-90 and onto I-87. The exit I am supposed to take, though,
appears closed. There are Jersey
barriers seemingly blocking it, nothing is tarred, and there are signs posted
everywhere screaming, "DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!" So I miss the exit, which apparently was
passable (who knew?) and go north six miles.
SIX MILES. Remember how six miles
got me on I-90 without any problems?
Well, six miles will now be revisited.
The six miles I gained in the beginning are about to be seriously
lost. As I leave the toll both, there
are three possible routes I can take, and the GPS appears to be directing me to
all of them. They are all connected at
the beginning like a series of veins, and I have to guess. Damnit.
Um … I-87? Okay, I-87.
Turns out I-87 is correct, and I can see my exit is Arbor
Hill Street, or some such malarcky. Before
you read further, I DARE YOU TO GOOGLE ARBOR HILL ALBANY NY. Go ahead.
Do it. Just do it!!!!! Yup, I end up in The 'Hood. I didn't say that; people who live in Albany
say that. All I know is that there are
multiple boarded up houses, and I don't make eye contact with anyone. I'm glad that my windshield is now littered
with dead bugs and that I haven't cleaned off any of the school construction
mud from my car and that I have a nice scratch on the front bumper. I've lived in Lawrence, driven many times
through Jamaica Plain, and spent a lost afternoon stuck in the bombed-out area
of Philadelphia. Arbor Hill, Albany
rates second only to Philly in "WTF" on the "I Think I Might Shit
My Drawers" scale. I do pass by
some spectacular churches (with bars on the windows) and wish I could take some
pictures, but there is no way I am stopping lest I cry, get murdered, or am
forced to shop at Price Chopper. None of
these options seems acceptable.
Thankfully I have Billy C the GPS maniac with me, and he
manages to direct me through the one-way roads of the city until I come in the
back way to Plumeri Sports Complex on Frisbie Avenue. I am early, about seventy-five minutes, and
the boys are just getting off the bus as I arrive. I figure this would be a safe place to park,
near the bus, so I back in and shut off my car.
Then I start looking for bathrooms because Floyd is a dink-shit, and I
am cramping up like I'm delivering something other than perpetual blood clots
(sorry, gents). I would accept anything,
a port-a-potty, bushes, whatever is available, because there is no way I am driving back down the street
to the KFC or McDonalds or the Sunoco station.
As a matter of fact, I am not going back THAT way no matter what. I don't care if I have to go home through
Vermont; I'm not driving through Arbor Hill in the dark.
There are bathrooms at Pluermi with real flush toilets, and
I also spot two port-a-potties about thirty feet from my car on another
field. If the bathrooms are locked when
we leave, at least I can maneuver in the dark potty if needed. (It is not needed.) We are all constantly entertained by the
roadside speed trap right outside of the field, and no less than six cars get pulled
over and ticketed in the two hours that we are there. Floyd and I make it through the game with
very little theatrics, SNHU wins, and we give the boys a small tailgate of
pizza and drinks and snacks (I baked Toll House cookies and brought apples). I refuse to leave until I see someone from our
team heading home, and I jump immediately into line behind them. We get onto I-87 right next to the sports
complex, SIX MILES from where I ended up, and $1.50 later I am off the New York
Thruway, over the bridge, and I roll back into Massachusetts.
I pass by the Lee rest area, and this time I decide to
randomly stop in Blandford. I keep
reminding myself to clean the bugs off the windshield. Maybe I'll remember. By the time I park the car, I've already forgotten. All I can think about is the severe cramping
and the fact that Floyd may have beaten me this time. I admit I check the car seat expecting to see
a CSI crime scene beneath me. I run in
to the ladies room, saying a brief prayer and hoping for the best. I really should've taken some meds before I
left New York, but I forgot. I am,
thankfully, just in under the gun. No
arterial bleed this time, but I really need to get home. I probably shouldn't have left the couch
today. Oh well -- Far be it for me to
let a stupid thing like menopause ruin my day.
As I exit the bathroom stall, I see the Billerica
contingency again, the same ones I saw in the bathroom at Lee going westbound,
and we burst into laughter. Our timing
is impeccable. By the time I reach my
car, I am still chuckling. I open my
cooler, get out a soda, open a sandwich to have ready for the ride home, stop
and fuel up, and head back onto the highway.
I have, yet again, forgotten to take my anti-Floyd meds and clean the
windshield.
I few minutes on I-90 later, I realize that I do not have my
debit card. Damnit. Did I leave it in
the gas pump? No way, I know I took it
out and had it in my hand. Did I drop
it? I reach for the pocket where I
always put it when I am done with it if I don't have my wallet out. It's not there. I search the nooks and crannies of the car
while I'm driving. Not with my phone,
not with the toll ticket, and not with the food. I pull over to the breakdown lane, not an
easy trick with the divots they added to the side, and I start searching the
car. After panicking for about a minute,
I realize that the card is in my other back pocket. Idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot. I get the car up to speed and pull back
onto the nearly deserted highway.
I finally locate the Bruins game on the radio after
suffering through the smooth jazz and soft-porn sounds of the Berkshires, and
discover it is 2-2 after the second, and I realize that I never found out the
score of the Red Sox game that disappeared when I entered New York
earlier. I listen to the game as I cut
through 290 in Worcester to get home. I
am expecting traffic there, I mean it is Worcester, and it is 9:30 on a
Saturday night, but I find myself alone on the road except for the SUV that is
suspiciously on my ass. I am the only
other car on the road, in the middle lane, and this dick-head is riding my
bumper like he really, really wants my phone number. When we get to a deserted part of the
highway, I suddenly wonder if he's going to shoot me or run me off the
road. Why does 290 suddenly feel more
dangerous than Albnay's Arbor Hill?
I make it home by 10:35 pm, three hours from start to finish
including stop-over time, and I start downloading the pictures from the
game. At 11:30, I realize that I am
asleep at the computer and decide to go to bed.
I remember to medicate Floyd, empty the cooler, and manage to crawl into
bed. Long day; long trip; successful and
eventful, as usual.
My life may not be standard fare, but it sure does make for
an interesting tale.
Besides, if I make it sound strange enough, maybe I can
convince a few of you to join me next time I decide to visit my new pals in
Arbor Hill. I'll be heading back there
in 2015 if all goes well. You guys bring
the munchies; I'll bring Billy C and Floyd.
It'll be a great time!
