July 27 – New, York, New York to Virginia. Disembarkation day, my least favorite travel day of all. We’re getting better at it though. My goal is to get to my rental car and get on the road. We have tried many methods of doing this, reserve at an airport and then get a ship’s transfer to that airport, reserve it in town and get a ship’s transfer to that site, get off and get a cab to take you and ride the rental car agency’s van to the car. Each of these has proven to be undesirable for a variety of reasons, so this time we tried something new, reserving a private car to take us to the rental agency. I’ve never used this method before because it seemed to be an unnecessary extravagance. I was not exactly correct in that. If you add up the cost of two transfers, the car is only a few dollars more and way more convenient. I have to say that, that part of my plan worked great. After that, not so much.
First problem came up when I called the car rental spot to tell them I was on my way. The guy who answered the phone said that cars were in short supply and I’d probably have to wait 2.5 hours to get one. Typical of a New York employee he was unimpressed when I said that I have reserved the care almost a year ago and that should have been enough time to get my car to the lot. When we arrived I went into the rental office and it was being manned by a lady so I knew I wasn’t going to talk to the same jerk I had on the phone. I got another break when the three people in line in front of me were typical self-important New Yorkers, Manhattanites to be specific. Whey all whined about every little thing, “Don’t you have a black car?” or “Why is this taking so long?” or “I’ve never initialed in this many places, why did you change the form?” or (my personal favorite) “I reserved a standard car but you should be able to upgrade me to luxury!” Let’s just say that the three transactions took about 10x longer than they should have.
When it was my turn I smiled at the lady and wished her good morning. I handed her my reservation confirmation, she typed it in and told me I was getting a Volvo 80, a pretty nice car. (As it turned out my satisfaction was only going to last about 2 hours.) The car came down and it was nice, very comfortable and the handling was great.
As we tried to get to the Lincoln Tunnel and off Manhattan it became obvious to us both that every single street on the island is torn up. Now there’s usually a lot of construction going on because the infrastructure is very old under the streets and it requires a lot of maintenance and upgrading but this was ridiculous. Every street I tried to use to go west to the Hudson River was blocked. Because every street is one-way any change requires at least two blocks of travel and when you hit your fifth blocked westbound street you find yourself 10 blocks downtown from where you wanted to be. I was about to change my route to get across the Hudson when I discovered a sneaky way back north right along the river, well almost along the river and when I got far enough north I found that it had access to the tunnel. Again, it’s better to be lucky than smart.
We were happily on our way across New Jersey to Pennsylvania when the next problem showed up. My GPS was not charging and I got a ‘Low Battery’ warning. No matter how I jiggled the lighter plug or anything else it wouldn’t charge. Now I usually print back up maps but I didn’t want to carry them all over Europe for three months so this time I didn’t. Charger cables are notorious for developing shorts to that’s what I figured it was. I figured, find a Best Buy and get another cable. My GPS showed me where the nearest Best Buy was and it was about a half hour away so I turned the unit off to save the battery for when I got close and might need it to give me the final directions. Before I shut it down I accessed the turn-by-turn page and tried to memorize the turns just in case. It’s good I did because when I turned it back on it started loading the maps and died. Fortunately, I remember the turns and drove directly to the store. I acquired the cable and when I got out to the car, it still wouldn’t charge the unit.
Now I figure the problem is the car. We’re not far from the ABE Airport so I drove to the Budget rental agency there and asked to trade cars. First they wanted to plug in one of their GPS units to make sure the problem was the car and theirs didn’t work either. So they offered me a Ford Escape, the small SUV. I said ok and they brought it down. First thing I did was plug in the GPS and it worked with the original cable, so we were on our way. About 2.5 hours behind schedule but we’re making two stopovers so we don’t really have to go that far today. Only about 9 hours.
July 28 – Virginia to Louisiana. The rest of day one and all of day two went very well. The Escape is fun to drive and handles well. Gas mileage is so-so at 26mpg but not all that bad considering it’s carrying both of us and about 200 pounds of luggage. The big drawback is the size of the gas tank only give is about a 390 mile range and that’s with no safety factor. I like cars that have a range in the high 400s at least. I know it’s a little nuts but that’s what I like. 500+ mile range would be great but hard to find. My Civic can go 400 miles on a tank and still have almost three gallons left in the tank. As your car ages it’s not smart to run it too empty, you can’t always be sure what’s at the bottom of the tank just waiting to clog up your fuel filter or ruin your fuel pump.
Tomorrow we only have about 5 hours to go so I hope that we get home early
July 29 – Louisiana to Home. Another short and uneventful day. A update on the mileage of the Escape. When we hit Louisiana and Texas where they have reasonable speed limits, 75mph the Escape’s high profile really kicked in. At 70mph I was averaging about 25-27mpg, at 80 it dropped to 21-22mph. Yikes!! My Accord and Civic average between 35-37 mpg at 70 and still get 32-33mpg at 80mph. With the small gas tank the Escape would have a reduced safe range of only a little over 250 miles. About half of what I like to have. Getting gas is irritating to me because I don’t like where most of the money winds up, in the hands of people who are really not friends of the USA. The less often I have to get gas the better.
We arrived home safe and sound and ready for a little bit of doing nothing. Of course that is a few days off. I have 3 months of mail to sort and who knows what time bombs are waiting in there.
For all its problems, it’s good to be back in the USA!
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