Riders Block

DAY 1

Binghamton, NY to Lancaster, OH

589 miles

The road beat me today.

I had seen signs in construction areas touting that the working men and women were part of the American Recovery and Reconstruction project, or something equally obtuse.  But it became utterly clear that the money from the Stimulus Bill is being used to repair interstate 81 between Binghamton and Harrisburg and driving on that road is an absolute nightmare.  I spent more time than I’d like to admit sitting or crawling through traffic, traffic caused by closed lanes and narrow bridges.  Pennsylvania in particular seems to have greedily taken the government funds and used them recklessly, repairing about every ten miles or so of highway, causing bumper-to-bumper headaches for every driver on I-81.  A yellow caution sign posted through the construction areas tells me that I should Watch For Stopped Cars.  I marveled at the suggestion but decide to play along but quickly get bored since every car in the vicinity is stopped.

The Blue Mountains along the Pennsylvania Turnpike are like an earthen wall built by prehistoric man to keep dinosaurs out.  They follow the highway, showing no summits or even slight deviation in height, but their east-west reach is endless.  The road is flanked on all sides by these giant floodwalls and a few times the road pierces the base of the mountains and drivers are plunged into the darkness of the mile long tunnels.  Before the first, I scratched my head at a sign that said Remove Sunglasses, but I quickly understood what it meant.

I was greeted in West Virginia with stand-still traffic that wove through two separate sections of road work, covering only about five miles or so.  But because of the massive amount of tractor trailers on the road, the drive took more than an hour.  I remembered thinking it was a good thing when our new president called for improving the infrastructure of out roads and bridges and thereby creating jobs for people out of work, but I never imagined it would mean I would have to sit in such appalling traffic for so long.  Its selfish of me to say but if giving a handful of guys the responsibility of repairing a bridge means that everyone on the road is going to be two hours late to their destination really doesn’t seem worth it.

My Ipod has run low on batteries, so I turn on the radio and find a number of stations actually worth listening to.  I even hear a Frank Zappa song on one and know I must have found a college radio station or a really unique DJ.  After listening to a few tracks on a hip-hop station, a white disc jockey comes on and says:

DJ: If a guy walked up to you on the street and complimented your chest, would you be insulted or take it as a compliment?  (tells us the radio call numbers and then the phone number)  We want to hear what you think.  Hello?

Anonymous woman caller: Hell yeah it’s a compliment, I wouldn’t be insulted at all.

DJ: Right?  A guy can come up and compliment you on your chest!  That’s not bad!

AWC: That’s right, I love mine, I take great pride in them.

DJ: What size are you?

AWC: 32DD.

DJ: Holy God!

AWC: Yeah, I know.

DJ: I wouldn’t compliment you, I’d get you the number of a chiropractor.

AWC: Haha.  I wear them with pride.

DJ: What do you got: roman columns under them?

I quickly changed the station, only to go back to it later and hear a grown man ask to hear a Miley Cyrus song, which turned out to be the worst song I’ve ever heard.

The mountains along the Ohio River look like the top of a fedora, with the banks of the river like its rim, and roll awkwardly on both the Ohio and West Virginia side.  Wheeling, WV is an old industrial town with ancient brick buildings, some still blackened with soot, and look as if immigrant children should be standing outside of them with dirty faces and golf hats.  Not modern-day immigrants but Eastern European ones from the days of the Depression with blonde hair and freckles and blue eyes.  Besides the deep red color of fading bricks there are huge factories and other industrial eye-soars perched along the river.  I drive on route 7 underneath the shell of rotting, steel bridges that tower over me and disappear into a hole in a mountain on the other side of the river.  Smoke stacks stick up from the banks of the river like phalluses, exploding in orgasmic into the sky, their ejaculate thick clouds of grey smoke.  The brick and concrete towers almost look organic there amongst the sloping hills and thick trees.

Route 550 West to Columbus bobs through hills and past farms and is very pretty in the sunset.  As I head inland from the Ohio River, the land begins to smooth out and becomes more residential and less agricultural.  I have only eaten two nectarines and a peach that day, not wanting to stop for food, and finally reached Lancaster, Ohio, just outside of Columbus, around ten thirty at night.  The only hotel I can find had two queen beds and was a smoker, so I settle down in one of the beds and watch television until I fall asleep.