As I got showered and dressed, the television news was still buzzing about the terrible shooting in the capital. My feelings of hopelessness for the human race, and especially America, were intensifiying with every detail that was released. Certainly, you can look at the story and see two heroic guards who didn't hesitate to give their lives for their line of duty. But that same point of view leaves you with the realization that one bad man took away two good men, and ruined a couple of other good people along the way.
The family reunion was going strong: the lobby was full of people wearing their teeshirts. That made me feel just a little better—that a huge family would have the drive and desire to congregate and meet eachother again. But I doubted that they all truly got along, too.
Monroeville Mall parking is just terrible. You can't swing a dead moose and find a decent spot. And rumours of the area as a hotspot for car theft are always very intense, whether or not they are justified. I've had good luck with parking and locking the bike under the Expo Mart, where it's not readily visible to people who cruise by.
This morning was quite a different story. The Expo Mart parking areas were packed with people who were attending a computer show. Normally, I use a couple of trips to load the bike: I take the big saddle bags and load the rear-end bag first. I often adjust the chain with my toolkit before mounting the bags. I might ride the bike back to the front of the hotel, too. Then, I return to the room to check for anything I may have forgotten. I'll grab my helmet, jacket, and tank bag on this trip. On the way down, I'll check out. After I load up the other bag and set up my Walkman, I'm gone.
Because the reunion folks were already leaving en masse, I decided not to ride the bike back in front of the hotel. But before I could even strap on the first bags, I was asked by people looking for parking spots when I would be leaving. My santurary was invaded by Pittsburgh natives looking for parking to the computer show: "Yew gawhin aht?". It took the first guy a couple of tries to get through to me.
Shucking the pressure, I told him I was, but I would probably not actually leave before ten more minutes. Another guy hovered and waited. When I returned to the room without leaving, I'm sure I could hear him gnashing his teeth.
Once out on the road, however, I was back in my old home town. As fate would have it, someone who graduated my high school in the same year as I did is now the mayor of the town. A fat lot of good he's doing! I took some back roads from the mall to my house. They were tared and chipped—a technique used in rurual areas to save money on paving. For hundreds of yards, if not more than a mile, my bike tracked through sticky goo and kicked up rock chips.
Riding past my house is always a curious event. I think of the time I spent there in my youth. I was very much the runt of the neighborhood in elementary school. When I returned from living in Japan, and two years on the swimming team, however, there were few people who wanted a piece of me. It was a very odd situation, at best. The house brings back those memories. And subtle changes to the house seem sometimes very surprising or make it very alienating.
This time, I noticed two huge air-conditioning units on the side of the house. There's always been a single air conditioner at the rear of the house. I'm not sure why they'd add two at the side. Even if they were replacements, the basement floor plan made it seem awkward, at best, to route all the pipes back to the furnace from that location.
I rode around the neighborhood a few times. Nothing has chagned. The streets aren't wider, and the empty lots are still empty. All the land between developments is still undeveloped. The town's economy is completely stagnant, as far as I can tell from just driving through. I'm not sure what the mayor thinks he's doing for the town, but I can tell you that I don't notice it.
Bored with the old streets, I popped up the hill to follow one of the roads I took when training on my bicycle. It was great fun; nothing there had changed, either. The road pulled through a few housing developments and then an apartment complex or two. After that, it paralleled PA-286, a major highway in the area. But the little road was on the top of a hill with a huge drop to the highway. You could see much of the little valley that held the highway, and it was always a fun bicycle ride.
And it was a fun motorcycle ride, too. Eventually, the valley becomes wider and the side street connects to the highway. I passed the back entrance to the plan where my old neighbors lived. In my day, the little road connected to the highway, right in front of a little rural church, without much ado. Now, there was actually a stop light! The little church was neighbored by some impressive industrial parks and a few small office buildings. Unfortunately, this wasn't my home town anymore—I'd crossed the border into the neighboring community befoe I had even had the view from the high hill.
Zipping out of the area on PA-286, I almost missed a turn. With so little traffic in the morning, it was no problem: I stood on the brakes, let go, and then threw the bike towards the exit ramp. On the right road, I opened her up and flew. Pennslyvanian roads are very wonderful, if you're not trying to get anywhere in a hurry. The roads are all, essentially, paved-over cow paths and settler's trails that were carved out of the hills hundreds of years ago. Like much of the east coast, the communities and propertly lines follow natural boundaries that were easy to see and undisputable even without the advantage of complicated measuring and positioning devices. Cities weren't planned: they just happened.
The roly-poly roads didn't make it from one place to another with much haste. But they were a beautiful ride. I got on the throttle and threw the bike into one sweeping turn after another. The topography undulated the road frequently, breathing deep excitement into the rolling hills. I traced along streams and creeks, and there were already quite rural farms and communities.
PA-286 leads all the way out to Indiana, Pennsylvania. Indiana is mostly a small college town—the home of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. But there's also quite a few famous people from the area. Jimmy Stewart, for example, was born in Indiana. He lived as a farm boy here before making it big, and the main road through town carries his name.
After Indiana, PA-286 continues on towards the north east through mining and farming towns. The small towns have a very pleasant feeling, like you could live there all your life and know everyone else intimately. And that pleasantness can abruptly lead to a strong feeling of stagnant misery. But the scenery is beautiful and the people are frirendly.
While I shot through the countryside, chiping my wheels on the gentle sweeping turns and working my suspension on the undulating roads, I always geared-down in the little towns. I rubbernecked a little, too. There were volunteer car washes, and the VFW chapter usually had a BBQ or sponsored a large flea market.
In Clearfield, PA-286 ends and you run into PA-879. Just before reaching my mark, though, I was distracted by a detour. PA-286 was completely closed and under construction, so I took the detour road almost dead east through the mountains. The Appilachians are very rugged in this northern-central part of the state. Only a county map would show these delcious side roads and forgotton towns.
PA-879 would have let me meet I-80 about two-dozen miles to the east of Du Bois, one of Pennsylvania's larger cites. The detour actually offered to loop back towards Clearfield. Since that wasn't the way I was going, I caught yet another state road off into the woods. With my dead reckoning detour, I managed to find my way to I-80 another 20 miles further east.
The two major interstates crossing Pennsylvania are I-80 in the north and I-76, which is the Pennsylvania Turnpike, in the south. I-80 goes through far fewer cities, and is also mostly at a higher elevation. The road is great fun; several of the hills will actually cause your ears to pop. The road is not very crowded, and is frequented by speeders. Since most of the speeders don't know how to properly handle the aggressive terrain and flowing highway, there are frequently fatal accidents. And to countermand all the bad press, there are plenty of state troopers here.
I used the normal rabbiting technique. I began hanging around in traffic and letting someone jump ahead of me. When they had a good lead—say, 200 yards—I would begin to pace them. They'd hopefully catch the eyes in the speed trap before I would. Or, they would hop on their breaks suddenly and I'd know to slow down well in advance. The technique works very well, if you're attentive and patient enough to use it.
This time, I was treated to the excitement of my rabbit actually being busted by a trooper. It's quite a thrill, since the trooper comes out of nowhere in front of you. The rabbit usually has their breaks on, but the trooper doesn't care. My heart was in my throat, so I decided to use the next available exit for gas.
Fortunately, I picked a good one: as I-80 cuts through the state and enters the Poconos, services become a little harder to find. The exit where I bailed advertised that there would be no services for more than forty miles.
I filled my tank a tiny little gas station and got back onto the higwhay. Even though I had a Mountain Dew with my fill-up, I was becoming drowsy. For a few more miles, I wondered about this. Why was I finding the need to take power-naps so often on this trip? It happened occasionally on my other trips, but this time it was a daily need. I wasn't drinking very much—especially compared to some of the previous years. And I was enjoying my slumber in the hotels.
But sure enough, I couldn't take it anymore and pulled off the highway under a small overpass. I parked the bike and took the keys, then hauled up under the bridge to doze a bit. Just 20 minutes or a half hour does it. Once I'm finished, I sometimes long for another caffinated soda but I'm always good to go.
I forged east on I-80 until I made Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. There, a complicated set of interchanges (and 25 or so miles on the northbound I-81) take me through Scranton and then on to I-84. I-84 goes and goes: it enters New York State after passing through a town called Port Jervis. The tone of drivers in this area gets smoothly worse as you near and then enter the New York border, eastbound.
Late on this Saturday afternoon, I was involved with a few trucks. Despite their immense proportions compared to my little motorcycle, I never mind riding with them because they're stable and courteous drivers. The problem on the highway this afternoon was folks travelling for their holiday, or to move, or to go see relatives.
After stopping for gas in Port Jervis (since I know that Pennsylvanian takes are cheaper, and therefore my last shot at cheap gas) I climbed up a huge hill on the other side of the Delaware river, which forms the border between Pennsylvania and New York state. Apparently, someone had been driving too slow in the left lane because a motorist was flashing his lights and beeping his horn and making all sorts of wild gestures.
What a scene! As the hill crested, with the obligatory "Scenic Outlook" turnoff, both drivers began speeding up. Never one to miss some free entertainment, I followed them carefully. They cut eachother off, and then tried to ditch eachother. This portion of the ride through New York is terribly, terribly boring. So I just let the fools entertain me! Finally, the aggressor absolutely floored it and zoomed ahead. The mouse was a Honda sedan with a husband and wife and two kids.
After fifty or so miles, I-84 exits New York and enters Connecticut. Once I hit Danbury, the first city on the way into the state, I stopped to get something to eat. I wasn't at all tired, but I was completely famished. I narfed down a Whopper at Burger King, topped off my tank, and continued on.
I-84 through southwestern Connecticut combines some of the most aggressive drivers in the world (close, but not quite equal to the fiends you meet in Boston), with some of the worst civil engineering on our planet. The roads make sweeping blind curves under huge bridges, and often throw an off-ramp or on-ramp into the mix to make things interesting. Of course, such areas are marked with lowered speed limits but nobody (at all!) heeds them. You'll fly through these death traps at 70 or 75 miles an hour.
At Waterbury, the road becomes much wider and seems safer. The sun wasn't near setting—at about 6pm, it is just turning gold and brillant behind me. I carved through the tiny cities and made my way towards Hartford. Soon enough, the exits were familiar: Farmington, at exit 39. One of my best frirends (and most influential work colleagues) lived there. Further east, the exit for the venerable University of Hartford whizzed past. It was getting a bit congested, and still quite hot.
To avoid more troulbe, I bailed out a little early and rode past Pulaski Mall and the state capitol building on my way into town. This wide-loop detour took me to my hotel, the Sheraton of Hartford. I parked in the turnaround in front of the hotel and checked-in.
After cleaning up, I went straight out to the bars. For a time while I lived in Hartford, I hit the bottle pretty heavy. During those nights, I would be at any number of bars or taverns in the city. I was a regular at a few of them. And I slowly began to feel that I was the ruler of the town. It's funny how I developed such a grandios sensation about the city, but it really was there. When I realized that drinking alone all the time governed my social life and kept me from doing many of the other things I truly enjoyed, I put the brakes on rather abruptly.
Anyhow, whenever I returned to Hartford, I always wanted to check out the scene. I walked to Scarlett O'Hara's, my favorite dive. The bar wasn't dirty at all, though the men's room was rather omnious. It's just that it was quite a cut below some of the other places around it. I had a few drinks there. When the band started, I left: it was just another thrashy band with more volume than talent.
Across the street, I climbed the escalator to Lord Jim's. This tavern was stuffed into the area beind an awkward hall in a large office building, but it had quite a bit of character. There was no band, so I stayed and played pick-up games of pool. I won a few—maybe seven or eight—before someone took me down. With happenstance, by beer was also empty. So, instead of going around again, I just left.
I walked down Trumbull Street, in front of the Civic Center. I thought about all the times I watched ice hockey games here. We'd stomp into the games, have beers, and then go back to Scarlett's when the Whalers lost. Jumping into the frey at 1030pm, after the games, was always terribly interesting.
The beers were making me feel fine. And I had some of the money that I won in Vegas burning a hole in my pocket. There are quite a few homeless folks in Hartford: they sit and suffer and pander from people as they pass. Since we're on the east coast, there's also stacks of shim-sham men. These guys will feed you any kind of story they can to break your heart and open their wallet. Their broken fan-belt kept them from making their pregant wife enter the hospital on time, and now the bills for the car and the little woman are piling up, and wouldn't you find it in your heart to just...
There was a destitute dude sleeping on the stairs to a closed restraunt. What a city: how could a restraunt right under the Civic Center go out of business?) So, I woke him up and gave him a C-note.
With my good deed for the day completely finished, I hoofed back behind the Civic Center. The Lithuanian Lady was still there; a four-story bar, they had nothing much on the first floor, two bands on the two middle floors, and outdoor drinking and dining on the top floor. It was quite a hangout, but tonite it was packed.
Next door was what used to be Challengers, a sports bar. It was a great place: huge, with easy views of all the big screen televisions. If you sat in a booth, you also controlled your own tiny 8-inch television. But it was closed, now. The logos were still up, but the windows were painted black.
I walked the other way, towards The Shark Club. On the second floor of the Ramada, I would go in and play pool all nite there. We knew the manager, who previously bartended and then had an owning interest in Scarlett's. The place was really neat. They had an outstanding view of the park, the pool tables were well-maintained, and it was guaranteed the clientele from the hotel. But, on Saturday night at 830pm, it was completely empty. While talking with the bartender about my old friend, and asking him about business, I pounded two or three drinks. I had the whole place, ten billards tables and the restraunt, all to myself.
Around the block, I tried to find some of the other places where I drank regularly. They were either closed or turned into dance bars. I longed for the old feeling. I popped into one of the new spots, a micro-brew bar. It was completely beyond itself. The rich decor and overpriced beer made for some whacky clientele. There were only two one-hole bathrooms; co-ed! It was a nightmare. Some fool was playing guitar and had a MIDI setup for a one-man band gig. I'd never seen anything like it before.
After only a beer, I left there and went next door. That place, a little sports bar, was mostly empty. But they had NTN trivia games, so I sat an played for a while. I wanted to order something to eat, but the kitchen had just closed. I drank as much as I could at this joint, thinking it would be as comfortable as I could possibly feel in the rubble of downtown Hartford.
And I was right: five Crown and Cokes later, I was blotto and didn't give a shit about the stupid city. I paid up as they closed and stumbled back to my hotel.
In my room, I looked down on the city and wondered what was wrong with it. I could never figure out what happened to the town; why it didn't grow and thrive. It had more turnover than Monroeville, but fell just as short of its potential.
Lying down in bed, I realized that I had completed something of a one-man pub crawl. I laughed as I fell into a fitful sleep.
Posted on 20 January, 1999.