Apartment hunting – day 4 – the long and winding road…to hell

After three long and heat filled days, we were ready to get home. Karie told me that she would pick me up outside Molly’s apartment at 8 am, so I coordinated with Molly and Lisa as to what time I would get up. I was planning on waking around 7 in order to be up and ready to go by the time Karie picked me up. Unfortunately, the heat kept me from sleeping well and I awoke at 4:30 and couldn’t return to sleep. I made the best of it by showering, watching an episode of “Rescue Me” and then walking down the street to get a breakfast sandwich and some fresh squeezed orange juice. About three hours later, Karie called to tell me that they were about to leave Brooklyn and they would pick me up at about 8.

They called to tell me they were outside at about 10am. Apparently they got lost in Brooklyn and then got stuck in the morning rush hour traffic. It was later than planned, but at least we were finally hitting the road. Getting out of the city wasn’t too bad and strangely enough, at one point, we were two cars in front of a bus from Ohio University.

The first leg of the trip was New Jersey. We stopped for gas and then continued on our way. I only mention this because it’s illegal to pump your own gas in New Jersey. I find that very odd… This was supposed to be a quick jaunt of about 30 or so miles before we hit Pennsylvania. Unfortunately for us, the quick jaunt came to a screeching halt about 5 miles from the Pennsylvania border. It took us nearly 2 hours to traverse those five miles. The holdup? A garbage truck had flipped over just before the toll booth, spilling its wares all over the road. They had closed two of the lanes and had haz-mat crews on the scene to clean up the mess.

We made it past the toll booth and started the long, boring trip through Pennsylvania. We were only in Pennsylvania for about 45 miles when traffic slowed to a crawl. We feared that the evil dots were behind the mess, but after around 30 minutes of slow moving traffic, we got through the construction that caused the slow down and continued on our way. We hit a few more traffic jams after that, but to be honest, after a while they all started to blur together.

At this point we had hit at least four slow downs, but we were finally making some progress… until we weren’t again. Traffic came to a sudden stop and we were sitting completely still. A semi in front, behind, and directly to the side of us ensured that we could not see what was going on. We were totally surrounded by trucks and sitting completely still. After 15 or 20 minutes, we started to inch forward, but didn’t get over five miles per hour. After an hour of slowly inching forward, we learned what was causing the gridlock. We were on I-80 West and across the median of trees, we could see a disaster on I-80 East. We saw fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, and twisted pieces of metal that had previously been cars. I-80 East was completely shut down by the accident. We figured that our traffic was caused by people looking through the trees to try and see the accident, but as we moved forward, we learned that they were re-routing the eastbound traffic onto our side of the road in order to get traffic moving again. The sudden influx of merging traffic slowed us down and caused gridlock. Finally, after about an hour and a half of sitting there, we started moving again… only to stop again about two miles later. All that traffic from the eastbound side that had entered our highway was now blocking off a lane as they lined up at the next exit. It took us about a half an hour to get through this second leg of the mayhem.

With that behind us, we finally picked up the pace and were on our way back to Ohio. By this point it had felt like we were in Pennsylvania forever and we wanted nothing more than to see that “Ohio welcomes you” sign. Unfortunately, nature had a different plan for us. When we were only about 30 miles outside of the Buckeye state, day suddenly turned into night and the skies opened above us. We were hit with a torrential downpour that slowed us down and eventually forced us to pull over. At first, I continued to drive by following the tail lights of the car in front of us, but when that car pulled off the road, I had no choice but to do the same. It was raining so hard that I could no longer see the road and it was unsafe to continue. Luckily, after only a few minutes on the side of the road, the rain let up just enough to let us continue. I waited until another car went by and pulled out to follow it. After a few minutes, we found ourselves a part of a caravan of slow moving vehicles, hazard lights blinking, working our way towards Ohio at a rate of around 25 miles per hour. As we drove westward, the weather eventually let up and we continued our normal pace, but we had lost at least 45 minutes to the slow down.

We made it to Ohio and we let out a happy cheer. From there it was a painless drive to Berea where Karie’s home and my car awaited us. We had to stop off a Denny’s for a few minutes to wait for our passenger, Karie’s friend Tara, to get picked up by her mom. We were soon back at Karie’s house. I transferred my stuff into my trunk and got back on the road for my final leg of the trip.

I was on 71 South for maybe ten minutes when blue and red lights suddenly materialized in my rearview mirror. “Great, I thought to myself. This is just what I need to end the perfect drive.” I pulled over and waited for the officer to walk up to my window. I handed him my license and he turned and spat. “Did he just spit on my license?” I thought to myself. It turned out that was chewing tobacco and he had spit on the ground next to my car. This was how our conversation basically proceeded:

Officer: Where is…spit…Sylvania?

Me: Just outside of Toledo, sir.

Officer: And where are you going?

Me: Columbus, sir. I’m driving back from New York and I’m on my way home. I just graduated from Ohio State and I’m living there for the rest of the summer.

Officer: spit… I clocked you going as fast as 70 back there. You know you’re in a construction zone? Spit… You’re supposed to go 55 in construction zones. Those signs aren’t there as a suggestion you know… spit.

Me: I’m sorry sir. I apologize sir.

Officer: You were obviously paying attention. You were using your turn signals. I’m not going to give you a ticket… spit. Just make sure that you slow down in the construction zones. I know that no one is working out there, but the rest of the drive back to Columbus is under construction, so I want to see you going 55… spit. Have a nice night.

Me: Thank you sir. I appreciate that sir. I will sir.

I pulled back into traffic and cruise controlled it back to Columbus at 55 nearly the rest of the way back. I know that I was fortunate to not get a ticket. A double fine speeding ticket would have surely not been pleasant, but I couldn’t help but feel frustrated. People were flying by me at 80 or 90 miles per hour and I got pulled over for going “as fast as 70.” I kept the needle somewhere between 65 and 70, so let's take the average of 67.5 mph. There was no construction going on and there weren't any lane closures or anything. So I was going (on average) 2.5 miles over the speed limit. Awesome.

I slowly made it back to Columbus and finally made it home around midnight. I threw my stuff on the floor and went right to bed. I had been up for nearly 20 hours and I had been in the car for 14 of those. It was most unpleasant and I get to do it again in a few weeks… this time in a moving truck.