"Lorrie?"
"Ngnh?" I'm not at my best in the morning. Especially after an amount of sleep best classed as 'Damn Little.'
"It's ten after six." Enough higher mental functions were online to parse this as Gus. The rest got a healthy adrenaline shock when the full meaning hit home.
"Gah!" Ten after six?! Only thirty-five minutes until the train arrives! Gus started grabbing things off the clotheslines while I brushed my teeth and got dressed in what I'd laid out yesterday. Holy crap, half my clothes are still damp -- we'll fix that in Cleveland! Fold, fold, fold!
Throw it all into the van! The Kitchener station's only five minutes' drive away, but fly because the one time you're counting on it to be late, it'll be early, just to spite you. We pulled into the station -- 6:40. Four minutes to spare... unless it'd been early, but the number of people on the platform was our cue that everything was now Just Fine. Phew!
VIA trains aren't like any of the Amtrak fleet, which shouldn't surprise anyone. I found them a bit more comfortable, and managed to catch a few minutes sleep during the hundred kilometres from Kitchener to Toronto.
To be perfectly honest, I still was getting over, "Hey, lookie here, I'm in a whole different country. It only smacked me on the forehead in financial transactions, listening to the radio, or when driving around: the first because I either had to count out colorful Canadian currency or ask, "Do you take American money?" (I only asked in Toronto, and in the station and on trains at that, so the answer was always "yes."). The radio... well, everything was fine until the weather report, which cheerfully reported that things would be warmer today, going all the way up to 5. On the roads, yes, there're the signs reporting distance in kilometers, but also all the 'One Way' and 'Do Not Enter' signs are in an alingual European style. "Stop" is still "Stop," though, without "Arrête," probably because I wasn't in Québec.
Those were the common things. But then there were the one-offs: while rolling into Toronto for the first time a couple nights before, I glanced up from my seat to see a billboard for potatoes. There's a state name in use as an adjective in front of 'potatoes' for most everyone reading this in the States, for from long advertising campaigns, Idaho is the Potato Place in the American consciousness.
This billboard was touting the potatoes of... Prince Edward Island. I needed a double-take, and I laughed.
Another effect of having been on the road so long and so far is that my sense of time has gone even battier than usual. I'm almost always good on short periods of time: a few seconds, a few minutes, an hour or so. Ask me what the date is, and I have to reach for a gadget or stop and think. Day of the week is likewise if I'm not employed... it all runs together. Now that I'm out and about, bereft of referents, the best way for me to remember what day it is is by where I am: "If it's Cleveland, this must be Friday," and the reverse, "If it's Friday, this must be Cleveland." It's not so bad, really, as I can blissfully neglect several hours in this fashion.
We were actually permitted to use an upward escalator to get to the train to Buffalo, which was a blessing as I wasn't really looking forward to lugging my bag up all the stairs to the platform. The attendant told us which car was actually crossing the border (only one of the three coaches would; the rest would be filled by people on one side or the other as the trip went on). I went to the front of that car; it'd be the last part to fill. Eventually, we rolled out into the gray morning.
I haven't said much about the weather unless it's been a direct impediment, and there hasn't been much to say, if you're familiar with the climate. It's been uniformly overcast the entire time I've been gone, and once I was north of Virginia, we've been looking at lows in the thirties and highs in the thirties or forties. Snow thusfar's been minimal.
About an hour before we were due to cross the border, the attendant passed around American customs forms. It asked the same essential questions as the Canadian Law, but had a notice at the bottom about the Paperwork Reduction Act, which included the notice that the customs process would, on average, take about three minutes.
Anyone familiar with Snow Crash probably just had a little chuckle over that.
Anyway, we eventually rolled back across the majestic gorge patient millenia of water have cut between Lakes Ontario and Erie, marking my return to the US. It was time, once more, for that time-honored ritual of the Clearing of the Customs.
This job, "Why are you here, where were you, where are you headed, and what's in that bag there?" took two Canadians two days ago. They stopped in the station, came through, collected forms, did ID checks, asked questions, and left.
The American equivalent featured a stop distinctly not in a station, perhaps half a mile to a mile from the Niagara Falls, New York station, along some overpass or other. Two SUV's, one marked and one not, pulled alongside the train -- what was this, a train robbery? The Amtrak crew got on, I suppose, as did the Customs Agents.
It was a whole team: about six agents, at least one of whom was a trainee, and another of whom was the handler for a black Lab, sent to sniff for Interesting Things (drugs or explosives, I have no idea, but probably drugs). The questions were about the same, and the whole three-ring circus was apparently further complicated by the fact that someone had mistakenly gotten out at the Niagara Falls station on the Ontario side, and was now running pell-mell along the tracks, across the border, and back toward the train (not that I could see them, but I heard this discussed in passing among members of the Customs Circus).
As the Customs Agents canvassed the train, I briefly compared myself to an imaginary stock profile of a drug mule. Well, I wasn't male, so that was immediately a point in my favor. But I was travelling alone: that was against me. I was neatly presented, casual but neither overly poorly or overly well-dressed (which could go either pro or con, depending). I was well-educated and articulate, in a professional career, and while I think about the crooked route out of a situation all the time (it keeps the mental muscles limber), I rarely actually take it, and I certainly didn't look or sound like I did.
Excellent. My turn under the weighing gaze of Customs Guy.
Blah, blah, where were you in Canada? "Kitchener. But I didn't visit any farms!" I figured if the Canadians were all up in arms about arms, the Stateside Circus might be too.
"Where do you live?"
Ha! This is obviously to catch me, for lo, it is on the sheet! "Berkeley, California." Which may be a strike against me, Berkeley being Berkeley and California being one of those, you know, pothead states.
"Um hum. And which are your bags?"
"Oh, this one here and that one above my head." I'd hoisted my suitcase above my head into the overhead bin, floor-level stowage being non-existent in this car. It stayed up there, too, while the dog went back and forth a couple times.
"And what do you do for a living?" What, do they have a grab bag from which they pick one extra question to trip up young, aspiring drug mules?
"I work in computers. I'm a systems administrator." And, therefore, make enough money not to be a drug mule. Unless I were addicted, but I don't look that, either.
"Uh huh. Did you bring anything back from Canada?" That's on the form!
"Uh, I got some medicine... I have a cold; do I have to declare my DayQuil?" Ah, yes, Persona Three: Lorrie the Pleasantly Befuddled Newbie. I show off the clearly-from-Vicks pills, still in blisterwrap. Regardless, it's way under the $400 citizen exemption; ya got nuttin on me, copper!
He spocks an eyebrow, "Thank you for your time, Ms Wood." Because, of course, I should have declared the DayQuil. Sod off, I've got a cold and can't be expected to think clearly. I smile brightly, "You're welcome!" Then I take out my Palm VII and read some e-mail: apparently there's service here. This is good, as we're here almost another hour while the Circus continues to hold sway. The customs stops are budgeted into the train schedules; the Canadian one gets an hour, the American, an hour and a half.
Without further incident (but with the aid and assistance of a darling wee bairn a couple seats ahead), we pull into Buffalo-Depew, handily about five miles from the Buffalo Airport, which is where my rental car is.
Constant Readers will find this a jarring shift: this is a train travelogue, what's this rental car doing here? Simple, friends: the Maple Leaf passes through Buffalo-Depew at 2:14 PM, Eastern Time. The Lake Shore Limited, a train running from Boston to Chicago, passes through Buffalo-Depew at... 2:30 AM, Eastern Time. Moreover, it pulls into Cleveland around 5:30 AM, and neither of those is my finest hour. Then, were I carless, I'd have to be at that same station in that same, er, exciting part of town at 5:30 in a couple more days to shuffle off to Detroit.... gah.
Not even for the sake of art will I hang out in this little nothing of a station for twelve hours, when Cleveland is a three to four hour drive away. Detroit is about as far from Cleveland as Cleveland is from Buffalo; similar logic applies. So, I reserved a car from Alamo in Buffalo which I scheduled to drop off in Detroit. Amtrak will continue without me, honest.
I asked the folks at the rental car counter where I could find some Buffalo wings -- I was hungry, and felt obligated to try them in their native land, as it were. After some conference, I was directed to a local Italian place that had, it was said, the best wings around.
I ordered them 'medium,' not knowing what 'mild' and 'hot' were like, and forgetting to adjust for what's essentially a Midwestern palate. While they were acceptably crunchy and properly done in the middle, the sauce was pretty boring, and I didn't want to offend by asking for Tabasco. In short... I hate to say this, but I liked 'em better in California. With this duty to the locale honorably discharged, I got in my car and pointed it toward the Thruway -- I-90, a straight shot from Buffalo to Cleveland around the bottom edge of Lake Erie.
As I walked out of the restaurant, fat, fluffy flakes began to fall. "Ah!" I declared aloud to no-one in particular, "It is the lake, welcoming me home!" The Great Lakes, you see, generate their own weather... (disinterested folks may skip the next paragraph).
When the jet stream, a river of air cruising the upper atmosphere, is poised just so, cold, dry air sweeps out of Canada and across the Great Lakes. At you'd expect, it picks up water as it goes, unless the lake's quite frozen over, and that hasn't happened in quite awhile. When it hits land, yes, it can drop some, but where the eastern parts of the Great Lakes region are truly 'blessed' is that it's where the glaciers' footprints stop and the Appalachians start: this newly water-laden air hits those mountains and deploys payload all over the place.
The unique part about this is that it's happening over a body of fresh water; this over an ocean would be totally unnewsworthy. Probably the 'only in winter' part adds to the charm, as well. Anyway, it meant a few fat, fluffy flakes could be of no moment whatsoever, or the harbinger of six inches of snow (equivalent to a half-inch of rain) dropped over the course of a scant few hours, with not even the sagest weatherman able to tell which it might be until it hit.
Fat, fluffy flakes were just "welcoming me home, how nice" as I got on the Thruway. About a half an hour out of Buffalo it'd become, "oh, crap, another bloody Lake Effect snow shower." A little while after that, it was, "... and it's sticking to the road, and I don't know how to drive in this, and what do I remember about this, and I'm not going to die."
See, while I'd grown up and lived most of my life in Cleveland, Ohio, I hadn't actually learned how to drive in the snow. I'd learned to drive in the spring, but didn't bother to get my license until I moved to California; I was well-used to public transit, as my mother didn't, and still doesn't, have a driver's license. So I was at a loss about How to Drive in Snow, but I thumbed through what advice I did have: "Steer in the direction of skids." "Follow a truck or another car at a longer-than-normal distance. Let them break trail, and you'll have an easier time.
That last one was a real clincher; I hung onto the back of a semi like grim old death, and lo, I did not die. I had to change lanes a couple times, which just made me happier to have a truck. Eventually, the snow lightened considerably, back to 'cute, fluffy flakes' somewhere near the Pennsylvania border.
The wind and snow, at a temperature so near freezing, left beautiful marks on the landscape: each tree, trunk, limb, and twig, had its stark black outlined in white snow. I was interested in making time and not stopping, or you'd have a picture here; I'm truly sorry I didn't snap any. This is what your sorry-looking 'flocked' Christmas/Yule/Whatever trees are supposed to look like. The only thing I have seen winter do to a tree that was more beautiful was when an ice storm coated the trees in a lot of water, followed immediately by a hard freeze: instead of black underlined with white, each branch had an icy jacket that following dawn, and the sunrise was scattered to rosy-fingered glory in a garden of sudden jewels.
I was in high school then, and I've never forgotten that image.
The unfortunate side effect of the Flocked Forest was that the road signs were also spray-painted in Lake Effect White, making many of them partially or totally illegible -- including the one that announced highway conditions for the route ahead as I paid my toll for the Thruway (leaving my change for the next guy's tab; why not?). The snow had only left 'Exit 7' legible, and a word that might've been closed.
I decided I didn't care. That was probably a mistake. Just east of Erie, in snowfall that hardly warranted it, the traffic simply... stopped. I started perusing the AM dial, finding a dearth of Erie stations, but several Canadian ones (I could tell when they talked about the temperature), and when I did find an Erie station, they were happy to say that I-90 was all screwed up, but not why.
Well, if I wasn't an old hand at snow, I certainly was an old hand at stopped traffic. When we were totally immobile (and only then), I whipped out the old Palm VIIx and read e-mail. Even answered a few, we were that backed up. My cell phone was a useless brick, but I could e-mail, so I passed messages to Mike to tell my mother I'd be late.
Two hours passed while we crept something less than ten miles, and we were eventually herder off the freeway and to the south. Cleveland was still a hundred miles away, and I'd had every intention of taking my mother to dinner, dammit. We were herded left, south, back under the freeway, and totally away from anything like a field I knew. There was a semi ahead of me; and figuring that if nothing else he could derive some direction from his CB, I trusted him there.
We convoyed down Pennsylvania State Route 8. I'd expected a brief twiddle along a frontage, or perhaps a mile or two through suburbs, then back onto the freeway on the other side of the obstruction. Oh, oh no. We're traveling through the dark, twisted woods of Western Pennsylvania, on a State Route to Nowhere. Signs indicated distance to Titusville. I declared to each, "But I don't want to go to Titusville! I want to go to Cleveland!
A former housemate of mine, Janice Barlow, believed she laboured under a curse: never to successfully traverse the entire east-west distance of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Once, the car broke down, leaving a carload of pagans stranded in Deep Fundyland. The next time, with none of the same people as the first time and in a wholly different car (she doesn't drive), the Jeep's radiator was perforated by a few hundred pounds of prime whitetail deer on the way back from New York to Pittsburgh.
After ten miles of twisty Route 8 through Western Pennsylvania, I wondered if it was contagious, this curse.
After about fifteen miles, I was seriously concerned that I was, perhaps, already dead, and this was only some bizarre journey to the afterlife, which would probably be spent driving to Cleveland in the snow, forever. This would, I thought, be nowhere near as interesting a movie as Gladiator had been, which was probably as good an argument as any for my continued and persistent existence. There had been no towns of any size, just the road and the occasional declaration about distance to Titusville. I was waiting for the next state route to the right, which would at least be back in the right direction.
The semi ahead paused in indecision when another route, 97, joined us from the left, unsure which way to go. He eventually decided straight, and we followed along the now joined 8/97.
A bit later, 97 went off to the right, thus following my sole criterion for turning: a numbered road heading to the right. Of course, it didn't hurt that by this time, PennDOT (Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation) had mustered some forces, and attended this intersection with signs and portents, most notably a chunk of plywood with I-90 DETOUR spray-painted on it in fetching flourescent green, accompanied by a right-pointing arrow. We turned... but not before I espied something actually familiar.
US 6 goes through Cleveland on its way to Chicago and Points West. It's actually one of Cleveland's main thoroughfares. I knew it also went east, of course, and there, not five hundred feet after the intersection where I had to turn right and away, was the sign for exactly that road! I might not know the in-between bits, but I know where that goes! Wait! Why are we going away from six? I like six! Take me baaaaaaack...
I trusted PennDOT, and turned right like everyone else, leaving US 6 to be all sixy by its lonesome. After awhile on 97, US 19 joined the fray, and carried us off to the right and north again: PennDOT was there, waving us on. I was watching the odometer click the miles away as they passed under my wheels. When we were nearly back to I-90, I saw a Dairy Mart, one of a chain of convenience stores in and around Cleveland. I cheered it, I cheered the freeway (which declared it was going to Cleveland, by gods!), I got back on I-90.
After flashing my brights at the semi that had faithfully led us through troubles, toils, and snares, I reviewed my location.
We had come perhaps ten miles down I-90 to duck around the blockage.
PennDOT's detour had been in the close neighborhood forty miles long. Bleah. And I was three hours late...
I declared to anyone who could listen, "I'm comin' Mom!" every time a sign passed declaring how far it was to Cleveland. Pennsylvania, like most states, has mile marker signs every mile, and other signs every few describing distance to the nearest large city. The mile markers here counted down to the western border: first some, then a few, then one...
Dammit, I chortled in my joy. I had a right. If I hadn't stopped in Buffalo for wings, I probably would have been uncomfortably close to that... that... whatever-it-was. The feeling came over me, strongly, that Ohio would be okay. It would be Just Fine. I would be Clear, and Free to Navigate. There was a Welcome Center at this next rest area, and I pulled in to calm down, use their pay phone and tell Mom I wasn't dead (in case Mike hadn't acted on his e-mail).
It turned out Mike had called Mom, and she was fully aware of the situation, and she'd be happy to see me whenever I came. Internally, I pointed out to my dissociative state that while dead people have been known to try to make phone calls to the living, it rarely works, and anyway Mom's a psychic spud, so I was obviously alive. "Oh," said That Niggling Feeling, and it went away. I went to the restroom, and talked with other drivers about the state of I-90 -- apparently, the whole mess had been caused by a car coming across the median and having a head-on collision with a truck carrying some sort of hazardous materials.
What can I say? After the insanity passed, the drive was uneventful. I picked up Mom and her husband, we drove to a non-Denny's restaurant that was open all night, and I had pierogies and some irrelevant entrée. Nothing else mattered... I was in Cleveland, the First Home, seat of my line, if you worked it matrilineally. Then we all went back to Mom's and collapsed.
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