September 2002

Driving.

"The Art and Practice of Proper Driving"

I've done an awful lot of driving in the last month (maybe this isn't the digression, but this is the main story, and the rest follows. Hmm.) or two and I would venture to say I have learned a thing about driving.

First, make sure your tires are properly inflated and all your fluid levels are checked.

Secondly, make sure all your lights are working, and check for any obvious mechanical difficulties.

Thirdly, make sure you have half a clue where you're going, which lane you want to be in and so forth.

Fourthly, I can't think of any ways to make this sound funny, so I'll just insert a random statement here.

Fifthly, use YOUR SIGNALS!!!!!

If there's any pet peeve I have, after all the driving I have done, it isn't the speeders (which are somewhere around 99.9% of the cars on the road) or even the really aggressive drivers (around 30% of the cars on the road). It's the people who can't be bothered to use their signals, whether it is to change lanes, turn corners, whatever. If you are one of those people, pause to consider the following scenario.

You are approaching an intersection, where someone is waiting to make a left turn. You are the only approaching car, and you are not slowing down for the intersection, but then suddenly hammer the brakes and make a left turn in front of the other driver, who has wasted 30 seconds in the intersection waiting to figure out what you were doing. What is going through the other driver's brain?

a) Jerk.
b) (unprintable)
c) (even more unprintable)
d) Does he not know how to use turn signals?
e) All of the above

If you answered e), you know how I felt at times. Usually I was using printable words in my head ("sawed off swordfish! Tortilla-brain!"), but especially when you are in unfamiliar turf and you don't know that Johnny-Ray Smith is always going to turn left at that intersection, and other cars are doing weird things, a little bit of courtesy from the other drivers goes a long way to improving the overall experience.

Having said that, I appreciate that on freeways, American drivers are more likely than Canadian drivers to allow you to merge on from an entrance ramp. American drivers are less likely that Canadian drivers to use their signals to let you know that they're doing this, but it's all good. Having been cut off in BC, as you may recall from August's JAW, it was nice to not experience that, even driving through Harrisburg, PA at rush hour, which brings to mind my central story for this month, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to get there yet. Let's mentally run through what else I wanted to talk about... (check, check, check...) I guess I've covered most of it now.

So yeah.

Last month I managed to arrive home safely from BC. This month I will endeavour to go to the US and back in relative safety and comfort. I managed to do it in real life, so hopefully this recounting of the events will end up with the same conclusions. Otherwise, I'm in deep doodoo.

Let's see. It was about this season, a few years ago, that the men from the east came to let the King know... oh wait, that's a Lost And Found Christmas song. Let's try again. It was a cold and rainy morning (or was it a hot and sunny morning? what was the weather? hmmm), no, it was a hot and sunny morning, as I headed off to the Harrisburg area. I had previously booked my concert tickets and my hotel room before leaving Victoria. My concert ticket for Purple Door, the festival to which I was heading, had arrived in the mail. Not that that stopped me from almost forgetting it that Friday morning. I dropped my sister off at her work, thanking her once again for reminding me of the ticket, then headed to Thorold Stone Road, where I got gas then drove down the QEW to the Peace Bridge. It really was quite a peaceful bridge. I have seen many bridges, but that one is as peaceable as most. Clearing the border was not a big deal; I was honest in my answers to their questions, and they didn't even ask to see my ID, so that was cool.

I had arrived on American soil, or at least on New York State's concrete roads, which have the distinction of being the second-noisiest roads I've ever driven on (Washington State wins that one, hands down, because there's more of a clunk-clunk to go along with the whine of the concrete. In Washington, a driver wonders if the state owns stock in a shocks-and-struts company) and I needed to figure out how to get to US 219. You see, I was going to head to Harrisburg by the route which MapQuest had prepared, which turned out to be a pretty good route.

Computer mapping programs and websites are a mixed bag. They often come up with good ideas, but just as often come up with really silly ones. For instance, I have yet to see a mapping program which sends a person from the south end of St Catharines across Thorold Stone Rd, although every local knows that shaves about 5 mins off the trip right there. But, as I said, this turned out to be a pretty good route.

I was driving on the understanding that speeding tickets cost money, and American money costs more than Canadian money, and as such, did not get any tickets. Why do I mention this? It is a commonly accepted axiom that the Interstates are the best way of travelling long distances. This is only half-true. The Interstates are the best way of travelling long distances, if you don't like scenery and you don't like ever needing to pay attention to your speedometer.

Of the various stretches of highway I drove, the Interstate portions (86, 80, and 81/83) were the least interesting, and US 219 and 322 were the funkiest (ok, there was a stretch of PA 26 which was sniftycool too). However, there is a good bit of variance on speed limits. 55 65 55 45 40 35 30 25 30 35 40 45... it's like an exercise in counting in 5s or something. I think it could have gone as low as 15, if school had been in, on one stretch. But the cool part was eating at the McDonald's in Brockway, PA, if for no other reason than it was the only McDonald's physically on my route (ie no turning off exits to get to). I dare you to drive 400 km on non-4-lane-divided highways in reasonably populated areas and match that.

At any rate, the drive was uneventful, and I got to my Super 8, in Etters, PA, by shortly after 4 pm, having left my place in St C's shortly after 9. I had made decent time. I had made such decent time, that there was really nothing to do but get supper. So I did. Actually, I fell up my stairs once, which was kind of funny. But that's a different story, and not really worth telling. Not even in a parenthesis, as tempting as that is at the moment.

But I bore you with my tedious setting up of the details. I would like to describe to you my sitz im leben, but that really isn't critically important. Basically, it was hot, it was mostly sunny, it was southern Pennsylvania, it was 8 miles from the Ski Roundtop concert venue for the Purple Door festival, it was now approaching 5 pm as I got my supper, so I sat and ate it, then headed in.

I arrived. Sort of. I was way early, but apparently everyone wanted to be way early. Getting to the Ski Roundtop general vicinity took about 15-20 minutes. Getting from there into the venue took upwards of 40 minutes. That's a long time to sit and idle with the air conditioning on and the mellow strains of WJTL flowing through the radio.

But I got in at last, not before Madison Greene had managed to lightly scrape my side mirror with their vehicle (I didn't realize it was them at the time, but I think I would have been equally ticked even if I had). I was in, I was in. I had my little program, my lovely orange wrist band (for a purple door, there was scant purple to be found!) and it was time to orient myself with the premises. In the Gallery area there were some local acts performing, in which I really wasn't too interested, though they were OK. On the main stage was a group I had never heard, though I had heard a lot about. So I worked my way forward to a comfortable listening location (I had no earplugs, and there were some massive stacks of amps) and started to listen to some catchy pop-rock; the stylings of the Paul Colman trio, of whom, on this evening, there were four.

Paul himself blamed it on the Ben Folds Five (which is a trio) for his inability to accurately count band members. At any rate, his stage presence and sense of humour won me over. I don't have any of their CDs yet, but on that distant day that I actually have something approaching an income, they're on my list.

However, John Reuben I didn't like. So I wandered back up and listened to Brandtson for a bit, and wandered around and about, finding the ever-so-dangerous RadRockers booth much too much to my liking, yet out of my budget, settling for an Aleixa cd (Disfigured).

I wandered some more, mostly just working off the tension of a long drive and some of the antsy anticipation I was feeling... tomorrow I was going to meet some friends I had never seen before!!! It was a weird, interesting, excited yet fearful feeling I was experiencing. I made my way to a payphone and called my dad to let him know I had arrived in relative safety. Jason Carson was preaching away in the background and I felt wiped. The long day was catching up with me.

But I wanted to stay to hear Bleach and maybe Relient K. Bleach I enjoyed. They put on a good old rock and roll show, the singer jumping off the stage, twin overdriven guitars playing hairmetal riffs. Quite enjoyable. Relient K didn't strike a chord with me, and I was so tired I didn't have any real reason to stay. So my day ended, and I went back to my car, back to my hotel, back up the stairs, carefully noting where my feet were so as to not fall up the stairs again, back into my room, into bed, where I collapsed. I watched about 10 minutes of TV, couldn't find anything interesting, read some of my Bible, and fell asleep.

The next morning dawned bright and cold. As we put on our hockey skates, we could tell there was a certain crispness in the air and... oh shoot, wrong story again. I really must work on my storytelling.

The next morning I woke up. This was an important start to the day. I find days go better when I wake up. Actually, the time flows regardless of whether I wake or sleep. I just tend to notice more awake than asleep. Even so, sleep is often good.

So I woke up and I was even more edgy than the night before. I was just really beside myself with nervousness, but I determined not to let that show. So I checked out of the hotel, bought gas and 2 litres of water (gas for the car, water for me), then went to Maple Donuts and had a French Vanilla cappucino and a blueberry muffin. Needless to say, I needed the caffeine to wire me up at that point like I needed an extra hole drilled in my cranium. But it tasted good, and it was a lovely morning.

I went from there to the Purple Door festival, listening to WJTL "the gates at PD open at 8 am." I looked at my clock. 7:45. OK, so I'd be ten minutes early. No big deal. I pull up in line and I see in front of me a car with two people who look suspiciously like they could be Jenn and Marla, and the bumper stickers plastered all over the back did nothing to disabuse me of that possibility. I spent the next ten minutes relaxing and waiting for things to happen.

Finally, the gates open and they let us earlycomers in. I go into the concert area and start looking around at more stuff, swinging through the merchandise hall a couple more times. I saw Jenn and Marla setting up the Hinge table and I knew it was them. So I hung out with them for a bit, which was cool, then wandered around a bit more, then hung out with them a bit more.

Then the music started up, so I wandered around a bit. I listened to a group from Lancaster called "The Mint". It was their first show, but to put it bluntly, they rocked. Because I was grooving to their tunes, I only caught the end of Stickman Jones, which was arty female-fronted rock, which I probably would have liked too.

But I wandered around a bit more, looking for my friend Kelly to arrive. Somewhere around this time I bumped into Denison Witmer, with whom I discussed pipe organs. You never know what discussions may come about. So I perched up in a nice spot I had found the previous evening and enjoyed, in some strange way, the sound interplay between Denison Marrs on the main stage and lovedrug on the Gallery stage.

That was cool, and at the end I wandered back to the Gallery area to see if Marla or Jenn had seen Kelly yet. They said I had just missed her, and I turned around to see her, right there... my emotion at that precise moment was inexplicable, but it was a mixture of relief, excitement, elation, and mirth all mixed into one. It was just .... cool, for want of a better word. From that point on, we hung out together, Kelly, her boyfriend Eric, and I.

It's funny, but there's not a lot in the rest of the day that stands out, except for a few main things. One is that I got all of Havalina's autographs and bought their t-shirt (that was before meeting up with Kelly). That rocked, just getting a chance to talk hurdy-gurdy with David Maust. Another was seeing The Violet Burning with Kelly and getting to talk with Michael Pritzl and Andy Prickett later in the day. Another was chatting with Ronnie Martin and seeing him life, even if he was a bit offkey in his singing. Another was listening to (read: singing along in a squeaky falsetto with) Brother Danielson in his 9 fruits tree.

But the highlight of highlights, the crème de la crème of the concerts was watching Havalina live. Words fail me to describe how much I enjoyed that show. But it was cool to see David firing off his cap gun during a song, to watch Orlando manhandle his upright and his electric bass (playing the former like an electric, playing the latter as though it were a gun), to watch Mercedes lose herself in the music, to watch Erick thumping away at the skins, and to watch Matt's guitar madness. Stage presence, they had in spades. Good tunes, in triplicate. I didn't want the concert to end, but it had to. And a good thing, since I had become separated from Kelly and Eric and they were looking for me. Before the Havalina concert I had run out of water-- two litres wasn't enough-- and I needed more, so I went to get some, then couldn't find Kelly and Eric when I got back.

The day ended with Kelly and Eric watching Switchfoot as I caught 238. I think they got the better end of the deal, since I wasn't really into 238, despite the hype I had heard from several friends.

This, the end of my time at Purple Door, was really just the beginning; the beginning of (insert ominous music here) my trip to Baltimore (pronounced Bawlimer).

Baltimore. That lovely harbour city on the Atlantic seaboard, kind of. It's not really on the seaboard, when it comes down to it, being as inland as it is. But it has a clear path to the ocean, so it's close enough. But I digress. We went to leave the festival; Kelly and Eric were to lead, and I was going to be the pursuit car. So I drove up past the aisle where they were parked, and watched helplessly as they drove the other way out of the parking lot. Oops. So I drove ahead and waited. And waited. And wondered if they were doing the same for me somewhere else. And waited. After about five minutes, five of the longest minutes of my life, they pulled up beside me. The chase was afoot. It all went well until we reached I-83. I had mentioned to Eric my aversion for speeding, so he was driving at kindly speeds. But traffic on the interstate has its own ways of dealing with people.

We were separated briefly, but I made a heroic charge, passing a long line of people and even Eric himself. I found this amusing, and I let Eric pass me, and from there simply followed him in. I think I would have found Kelly's place OK without the leading, but it certainly helped. We hung out for a bit, then Eric was tired and wanted to go home. I wasn't sure if I should go at that moment, but Kelly wanted me to stay and chat a while (I was staying with Eric, since Kelly's place was full, what with some extra family members staying over and all). So I chatted a bit, then Kelly's mom gave me some bedding and stuff and I went to Eric's, where I fell asleep.

Sunday morning was a Sunday morning like many I have experienced. Wake up, clean up, eat up, and head up to church. Bible Study (or Sunday School, as they called it) and church were alright, if a little different from what I'm accustomed to. We had a nice big lunch (lasagna, mmm) then Becky came over to meet Kelly and Eric and I to go down to the Inner Harbor. Eric wasn't feeling so well so it turned out to just be three of us. I must say, Becky is a good driver. She was very considerate of my uncomfortableness with driving in an unfamiliar city. She uses signal indicators. She is my friend. We only had to jump a considerable number of lanes once.

Anyway, we parked under a mall in Baltimore. That was cool. Actually, it was warm. Very warm. It was easily in the mid to high 90s (that's Fahrenheit, because the Americans haven't converted to the real temperature system yet), but even so, Becky and Kelly looked very cool. We walked around the inner harbor, in and out of air-conditioned buildings. We saw all sorts of neat things, including a big pentagonal building, an old fort, and an ESPNZone. Becky was a thorough tour guide. But she had to work, so our tour was shorter than it could have been. We said our goodbyes, and Becky helped me pay for the parking garage. We followed her car out to I-83 then went back to Kelly's place, where we recuperated briefly from the heat before going to the Goucher College campus to wander. That was fun, but warm. We went back to Kelly's place again, then decided to go out for a crab pretzel at Silver Springs Mining Co. Eric was feeling a bit better and came with us.

We went back to Kelly's place and hung out for a while. Eric was tired and went home, but I hung back and chatted with Kelly for a while longer, which was nice. Eventually, I was tired and went back to Eric's place, and fell asleep. It had been a fun, but full day.

Monday morning was a Monday morning. I got to Kelly's place by around 8 am, but Kelly was still asleep, so I sat and chatted with her parents and had breakfast, playing with her niece and nephew while I waited. Once Kelly came down, we watched a series of movies: Head (Monkees), A Hard Day's Night (The Beatles), Paul Simon on the Muppet Show, and such. Kelly painted a guitar pick with the Havalina logo on the t-shirt I had bought at Purple Door.

In the evening, after a nice ham dinner, we went to the Avenue, which apparently is pronounced strangely in Baltimore, "av-en-oo" rather than the more proper "av-en-yoo". That was neat, wandering around craft stores and book stores and Celtic stores... actually, come to think of it, all those 'stores' should read 'store', but it makes for better parallelism to say 'stores'. Or whatever. I'm pushing 20K at this point, so I may cease to make sense. There were no movies I really wanted to see at Loews, so I was a spoilsport and instead got Eric and Kelly to rent a Pink Panther movie, which we watched and laughed our heads off to. Maybe not off. Actually, if I had laughed my head 'off' that would have been a little painful, and made a lie of my earlier statement that I had safely gone and come back. But that is of little import.

Again I stayed back and chatted with Kelly till late, and then went back to Eric's to sleep.

Tuesday was my date of departure. Once again I managed to arrive at Kelly's place before she had wakened. This time she woke up a little earlier so we were able to go outside and play catch with a football (or, perhaps, to state the case more accurately, play chase with a football, since both of us ended up chasing a bit. I couldn't throw, and Kelly couldn't catch, so that was a bad combination, and sometimes Kelly's line or distance was a bit off, although she usually threw a nice tight spiral). The intense heat of the previous days had broken at last, and instead of being in the low to mid 90s, it was in the low to mid 80s; quite nice in comparison. I knew it was going to be a good day to travel. So I said my goodbyes (goodbyes are always sad, says a song by Starflyer 59) and headed off.

The journey home was uneventful, except that I got to about Mifflintown, PA when I realized, while filling the car's gas tank, that I had accidentally taken the spare key to Eric's apartment. Woops. So I had in front of me the challenge of finding the Mifflintown post office, so I could return the key to its rightful owner. It really wasn't much of a challenge, since the town is quite small. But it was kind of neat to once again go off the beaten track, as it were, or at very least, to go on a slightly less beaten track. The route I took back was in every other way virtually identical to the route I took out, right down to the stop for McDonald's at Brockway.

However, there was an awful lot more toll on the way back. 50 cents to run on the I-190 through Buffalo, $3.50 CDN to cross the Peace Bridge (which was still staggering in its utter serenity). Pricy stuff. Be forewarned, dear reader, to carry sufficient change when you go on this route.

But I had returned to Canada, back to my home and native land. So I drove back to my place and unwound, content in the good times I had had, and having learned a new appreciation for the power of the turn signal.

Until next month, which I promise will be much shorter, since I don't like writing long JAW's any more than you like reading them, remember to keep your stick on the ice, your ice in the arena, and the arena in your local community.