Vagabender

The morning after Frank's birthday party, we left New York and sort of made an unspoken decision to ball it. We are sponges which have become full and our money is running low, so it seemed like the thing to do was to drop the hammer and head for the farm. 36 hours later we are there.

We made three stops. First in Utica to get sandwich fixins and deal with our spare tire. When the front passenger finally gave out the other week and we had to bust out the spare (a.k.a. Manmohan) with the aid of bolt-cutters we never figured out a way to re-attach it. Manmo had just been riding in the back with Sixto, effectively eliminating our ability to have one of us sleep while another drove. This would have to change if we were going to make good on our plans for some serious non-stop driving on our way back out West.

Back in Maine after we'd discovered that we probably wouldn't be able to safely lash the tire back up under the truck with ratchet straps I'd had the idea on the way back from the bathroom that we might be able to do it with a long bolt of some sort. The idea was to replicate the mechanical force of the ball and chain mechanism which had rusted solid and which we'd had to cut apart in Massachusetts. Upward pressure from the center of the wheel. By somehow dropping a long bolt from the undercarriage where the chain used to be, I reasoned, we aught to be able to keep the tire in place with the bolt coming through the open area of the wheel and some sort of plate/washer/lock-nut arrangement holding it up from below.

So after we hit the grocery store and made sandwiches in the lot, we got directions to the local Wal-Mart which had a Lowes outlet in the same complex. The Americavilles in the towns along the NY Throughway are a little more difficult to find since it's a tollway dedicated to long-haul travel. You have to pay every time you get off it, so there don't tend to be commercial developments devoted to serving that traffic. But anyway, some nice lady gave us directions, and with a little wrangling -- I had to go back and get a different sized bolt than we first bought which was alright because the check-out girl was cute with two braids and art-school with classes in calculus and physics and kind of frighteningly long fingernails -- the bolt theory worked out fine.

After that we drove to Buffalo, where we stopped at the Anchor Bar, the original home of Buffalo wings. We got a platter of those and a pitcher of Labatt's, and then cruised on up to see Niagara falls. At 2am, Niagara Falls is an interesting place. Pretty deserted. The US side has a park and some regular family tourism stuff, and then also a pedestrian bridge over to the Canadian side which has casinos and bright neon a-go-go. There wasn't anything open or any traffic, but you see a few clumps of people wandering around; a group still out after a wedding reception, some silent stumblers making their way back from the Canada side, teenagers evading their families, and so on. The falls themselves are powerful, but not as awesome as you might think from the hype. Maybe it's because it's hard to get real close, or maybe it's because to get a full view you need to be over in Ontario, but I wasn't highly impressed. They certainly roar, and the force of the falling water creates some impressive clouds of mist, but somehow I expected them to be, I dunno, taller. We spent a few minutes admiring the natural beauty and then lit out for Chicago.

On the way out of Niagara, Mark slept in back and I dozed in the passenger seat while Luke pulled a heroic 5-hour shift into mid-Ohio. The driving cycle works as follows: one man drives and gets to put on whatever music he likes. Whoever most recently drove gets the passenger seat, where you can navigate, chill or lean all the way back and get some catnapping done. The third man, who will be the next to drive, is in the back, where you can actually stretch out and sleep.

And so it goes. In Ohio I slipped into the back and Mark took the wheel until we reached Chicago, where we were hours early to meet up with Dave and Jessica. Fortuitously it took a while -- wandering the suburbs, visiting the hood, finding and fleeing an over-crowded wal-mart -- to wrangle an oil-change and so we weren't too early for an afternoon visit.

We know Dave and Jessica from high school. Dave was one of the first friends I made when I switched to South Eugene High School; we were computer nerds together, BBSs and all that. We also worked on the newspaper together. Jessica was a rude girl who I never got to know very well at the time because her boyfriends in that era were intimidating and didn't seem to like me. Flash forward a little less than 10 years and they're living in an awesome place in Chicago -- one of these early 1900's warehouses near the city center which have been converted into lofts. I gather the walls could be thicker, but the space is amazing, and there's a chic roof deck with a postcard skyline view and a big gas grill we used to cook up some delicious steaks. They're also gonna get married in the fall. Wohoo!

We had a good little visit, catching up a little and goofing off a lot, and after we'd supped and had a couple beers I downed a cup of coffee and took the wheel for the next shift. Dave had given me some audiobooks to put on Luke's iPod, so I listened to this kind of general science things called A Brief History of Nearly Almost Everything which didn't blow my mind, but which was pretty entertaining and good for keeping me awake. I took us down Illinois and about 100 miles into Iowa (and lost the cap to the gas tank) before turning it over to Luke, who brought us on home.