Chapter 4: Day 0
What About Bob?
Christian looked pretty concerned, but it wasn't clear whether he was more concerned over what had happened, or the prospect of letting everyone else know. "Do you think we ought to tell them?"
I turned around and looked at the dozen or so people sitting behind me in the van. "I don't know. They look pretty content back there. I don't want to be the one to wreck their good moods."
"But what if someone notices?"
"Oh, they're too busy playing those trivia games."
A somewhat scolding, but plaintive voice from the rear called out "Haven't we been here before?"
I shouted back, "No, it's just your imagination. You see so many pictures of DC on TV, that when you see it in person, it's dejavu all over again."
Christian leaned over and asked: "Do you think they bought it?"
Before I could answer, an irritated sounding voice from the other van crackled out of the CB radio: "Have any of you guys figured out yet that you're driving us around in circles?"
This chapter picks up at the beginning of the first travel day of the vacation. While the timing involved was technically Friday, the exact time of day would have been better described as late Thursday.
We were going to get underway by midnight. Ron was going to get some sleep after the pizza and before the departure time. Basically, we were going to do all sorts of things that we never did. After all, there's just no point in the world in trying to get two hours of sleep when you're excited, because all you're going to do is feel even more tired after you spend a couple hours tossing and turning, trying to sleep.
There was also a danger inherent in saying that we were going to leave "Midnight, Friday." That danger was that there are two definitions for that, and while most of us understood that to be a continuation of Thursday night, Bob Ericson took it to mean the end of Friday. Thus, our waiting for him was pretty much in vain. All that waiting really did was to make us late.
Ron spent about a half an hour searching the SAIL 93 notesfile for Bob's phone number, and even after enlisting help from a couple of the other members, they couldn't find it. Any reader outside the computer industry will see this as clear evidence that it takes a room full of software engineers to consistently overlook the obvious solution to a problem, and it was due to this mindset that it wasn't until about 12:20 AM that anyone thought to call directory assistance.
They called directory assistance and got a phone number purported to be Bob's. Ron called the number, and got an answering machine. Ron left a suitably threatening message, and a few minutes later, received a suitably frantic phone call from Bob, freshly awakened from his slumber, surprised that his life was one day shorter than planned. The two of them agreed to meet at MRO4 (one of DEC's Marlboro facilities), rather than at Ron's house.
So, we finished loading the vans, and spent ten minutes standing around in the cold stamping our feet while everyone participated in an extended survey to verify that no one knew where the keys to one of the vans were. We eventually got that straightened out, hopped into the vans, and rushed off into the darkness of night.
Ron, a minister in good standing, was also the driver for the passenger van for the first leg of the trip. Ron, an otherwise decent man, also had no hesitation to make frequent calls on what must have been his patron saint, "Our Lady of Eternal Acceleration." He made the van do things that I didn't know vans could do, or at least could do that quickly.
We met Bob in the MRO4 parking lot, pretty much as expected, and drove off into still more darkness, with only the sound of Bob's apologizing and the scent of Bob's alcohol laden breath to interrupt the stillness of the night. Well, there was also the roar of two Ford vans with engines at redline.
So far, we were only an hour or so behind schedule, which when you think about it, probably wasn't so bad. We planned on leaving at midnight, and got out around 1:00 AM. The trip computer said it'd take 26 hours of driving to get there, and our schedule said that we realistically had 36 hours to do it in, although we had people to pick up on the way who were expecting us to not be late.
Throughout the day, Georgia and I updated each other (via car phone) as to our progress, and over the course of the day, it was clear to me that Georgia's carload of people were taking a completely different approach to the drive down than our two vans full of people. Georgia's approach was to load everyone into her car, drive as fast as the car would allow, and stop only for gasoline; any matters of personal relief were to take place in 20 seconds or less. Evidently, they were making pretty good time.
Our van, on the other hand, was taking a more relaxed approach to the trip. It wasn't like we weren't hurrying at all, because the speedometers were reading average speeds that would consistently cause consternation on the part of the local constabularies. It's just that we weren't so hesitant to make multiple rest stops, and once at a rest stop, people would vanish for a half an hour at a shot.
So, we showed up to Trevor's place in Hartford about an hour late, although Trevor didn't seem too upset about that. He was the first to use the cargo van as the sleeping van, clearing a space among all the stuff to lay down in. By the time we got to Delaware to pick up Kathleen Rinaldi, Margie Shay and Tom Blocher, we were still running about an hour and a half behind schedule, but they didn't notice, because they were napping on the floor of the Denault's apartment. It wasn't until after we'd collected everyone that we got into the serious rest-stop foot dragging.
Now, if being packed up in a crowded van, bent into a pretzel to fit the small seats sounds sort of uncomfortable, or even tortuous (and it was), I'd also have to say that it was fun, anyway. The driving was done in shifts, with Ron driving (at breakneck speeds) from Boston to Delaware, Christian driving (at breakneck speeds, in circles) to Virginia, Paul Curtin driving (even faster, but in straight lines) to Jacksonville, and Paul Meredith driving the penultimate leg.
We took long stops for meals. We took long stops for potty breaks. We took long stops for gasoline. Basically, we took long stops for any excuse we could find to get out of the van to unwind.
It's right around here that I came to realize that in my advancing thirtysomething years, ibuprofen has come to be my most cherished traveling companion. There's just something about sitting in the back of a van for six hours with no legroom that makes my knees feel like they're about to explode. And, maybe they were. I don't know why I never think to include a party-pack of Advil when I pack for a vacation, because I always end up picking up a bunch on the way.
That left the trip total medication at: ibuprofen for the knees, lactase pills to digest the pizza, simethicone tablets for what the lactase didn't take care of, and Dramamine for anything else left over -- and I hadn't even gotten on the boat yet. For the life of me, I can't imagine how people traveled before they had these pills to interact with each other.
The Friday drive also had a few highlights that everyone could share. The first was the Mobius Highway: We got fed into the top of the inner beltway in DC, and somehow, it took us one and a half laps to find the exit. It looked as if we were just going to keep going round and round, and it also looked as if Rod Serling was standing on the side of the road. I don't know how that highway works, but it's magic, because once you get into the loop, there's no way out. We eventually stopped and paid tribute at the visitor center, and the portals of exit were opened for us. We left DC with a tear in our eyes, and the sounds of Christian shouting his new mantra "It's not my fault!"
It was sometime in either Virginia or the Carolinas that Trevor decided to sit on a half a bag of Hershey Kisses, leaving a collection of most interesting and suspicious looking stains on the seat.
Somewhere
south of DC, someone in the passenger van noticed that
the radio had a slot for a cassette in it. This was
universally denied by all the software engineers on the
van (who insisted that there wasn't a cassette deck to be
found), but was verified by someone with the common sense
to actually stick their finger in the slot labeled
"Cassette" on the radio. Kathleen just happened
to have a bag full of tapes, freshly recorded just for
the occasion, so we spent about four hours in an extended
sing-along.
Actually, what they did was sing "Achy-Breaky Heart" enough times that it nearly squashed my psyche like an over-ripe zit. This kept up until shortly after dinner (taken at a greasy shrimp place in Santee, South Carolina), when everyone fell asleep.
Or, pretended to fall asleep, because sleep in that passenger van was impossible. On the other hand, sleep in the cargo van was quite possible, partly because there was room to lay down, and partly because right after the Beltway Incident, they had a bottle of Jack Daniels to pass around to help lift their spirits.
In the end, it wasn't such a bad first day, or travel day, or "Day 0," or whatever you want to call it. The only thing that troubled me about the day was the realization that as soon as I got the hang of traveling on the vans, we'd all just climb into another vessel that was even more uncomfortable.
Thus ends the "Salad Day" of my vacation.
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