Time for Part 2 of my rambling road trip report from last summer. Part 1 ended with me going to sleep outside Toledo. The next morning I woke up and hit the road: Interstate 80 eastbound. This was to be my longest drive of the trip, just over 450 miles to Scranton, Pennsylvania. With a reasonable number of stops for a break along the way, it’s not exactly grueling.
At the first stop, I decided to try out my new GoPro video camera. My wife had given it to me for Christmas, and I haven’t been able to find time to play with it. I wanted to use it to capture some of the drive, since still photos don’t really capture the experience.
So I tried setting it up and…problem: The camera reports an SD error whenever I try to start recording. That means it can’t save the video to the MicroSD memory card. I could presumably buy another MicroSD card anywhere, but was that really the problem? Or was the it the camera that was malfunctioning by being unable to access memory cards. Since I have limited time on this trip, I decided to try it both ways.
When I stopped for lunch at one of the tollway rest stops, I got on the WiFi and found out from the GoPro website that Target carries their cameras. I found a Target at the next exit and went the the camera section, where I bought both a 16GB MicroSD memory card (with adapter) and a new GoPro HERO3 White Edition camera. My plan was to try out the memory card in my current camera and if that didn’t work, open the box on the new camera and use that.
I decided to make a little headway before fooling around with it any more, but at a later rest stop I decided I’d driven far enough to take a break and try the GoPro again. The camera didn’t seem to hate the new MicroSD card, so I mounted it on the inside of the window with a suction cup, turned it on, and drove to the next rest stop, where I removed it. I was planning to take a few more test shots and look at them in the hotel.
All this time I had been driving across Ohio, and let me tell you this: Interstate 80 through Ohio is really boring. Eastern Ohio is flat and uninteresting driving, and it’s a limited-access toll road, where all the rest stops are the same.
And then there’s the road construction. It didn’t create traffic jams, but in every construction zone the official speed limit on I-80 dropped from 70 miles per hour to 55. And it seemed like everything was under construction. Just as I’d be getting into the rhythm of 70 mph traffic, we’d hit another construction zone and have to slow down, crawling along on roads designed for much higher speeds. Then I’d see those magic words “End Work Zone” and finally get to speed up again…until I hit the next construction zone. At one point, as I was passing the “End Work Zone” sign, I could already read the “Reduce Speed” sign where the next construction crew had set up.
Just past Youngstown, as it began to get darker, I caught up to the storm again — or at least I caught up to a storm of some kind — which put an end to my video experiments. (The GoPro housing is weatherproof, but that doesn’t keep raindrops from obscuring the view.) I then crossed over into Pennsylvania and spent the next next 6 hours driving on unfamiliar winding mountain roads, in the rain, surrounded by trucks. About half of it at night.
And I loved it. I’ve always enjoyed driving. I find it…not relaxing, exactly. But I like the feeling of focus that comes from a long drive. I’ll be cruising along in the right-hand lane and I’ll start to creep up on a truck, so I flip on the left turn signal, change lanes, pass it, signal again, and move back to the right. Problem solved.
A few minutes later, I’m creeping up on another truck, but a third truck is overtaking me at the same time. It looks like it will want to pass me about the same time I’m trying to pass the truck in front of me, and that won’t work on a two-lane road. I could just slow down, let the overtaking truck pass me, and then follow him around the truck in front of of us. Or I could speed up and pass the truck in front, and then let the overtaking truck pass us both. Whatever I decide, I just do it and move on.
About an hour after it gets dark, I’m rolling through the night on cruise control, on a straight piece of road, with trucks about a quarter mile ahead and behind me. I’m just enjoying the ride. Then the truck ahead of me gets my full attention as its hazard flashers come on. That would makes sense if it was coming to a stop. At night, in the rain, it’s hard to judge distance, and a following vehicle might not be able to tell if a vehicle far ahead has stopped, so truckers often do this. I now watch carefully, and I after a few seconds I can tell I’m gaining, so I begin slowing down.
Now I have to make sure the trucker behind me knows I’m stopping, so I flip on my hazard flashers, and a few seconds later I see his hazard flashers start up. And just like that, we all come to an orderly stop and then begin crawling forward slowly. After a few minutes, vehicles in front of me start merging left, and I can see lights flickering from an emergency vehicle ahead. A minute later, I pass a police car that is blocking the right lane because the storm has blown down a tree across most of it. A few seconds after that, we’re all accelerating to 65 mph again.
Winding roads, trucks, poor visibility, police cars, and fallen trees. There’s nothing complicated about any of it, nothing requiring long-term thinking. I just have to stay focused and pay attention. It’s a continual series of small problems that I can solve one after another, never looking back, never planning more than a minute or two ahead.
Eventually I arrive at my hotel in Wilkes-Barre, the Best Western Plus East Mountain Inn & Suites, which was hidden back from the road a bit. It had bell carts, so I had an easier time getting everything up to my 4th floor room. I farted around on the internet a bit — again after having to ask the front desk for the password (why don’t they just put it on a note in the room?) —Â before falling asleep.
Finally, here’s a sample of the video I got while I was driving through. This was just an experiment, so there’s no real point to it, and mounting the camera inside the car leaves too much of the dashboard visible. But I need to get more experience editing, so here goes. Best viewed full-screen to see the super-wide angle from the GoPro:
[…] Update: Part 2 is up. […]