The Long Drive Day

Going to and coming home from Maine is quite a commitment. Some years I break the trip up by visiting friends along the way. This year Russ drove both ways with me so instead of taking four days to go and come we do it in two with a stop at Russ’ father’s house. Today’s leg is the long one.

I was up early to watch one final sunrise as our view over the gulf of Maine is perfect to watch the sun coming up. We were mostly packed, but I still had to strip the bed and put all the linens in the bag, clean out the fridge and pack the car.

Russ brought everything from upstairs down for me, but I packed the car while he was on a work call. In my best Tetris skilled way I was able to put at least a third more in the car today than we had going up and I could see better out the back today. One benefit to having bought all the Christmas presents is they went on the back seat under Shay’s two beds, thus lifting her up higher on the seat. This enabled her to lie down and look out the side windows which pleased her greatly. Russ and I have decided that we are going to have to recreate this Princess and the pea seating for her from now on.

As the hurricane is coming to Maine it felt like everyone with an RV was traveling south today to get out of harm’s way. Despite the road being full of fifth wheels and sprinter vans we didn’t have any incident on the first half of the trip. We stopped in Worcester for lunch. We got Poke from a place called All In Poke run by a lovely man. It was a much better lunch than our normal road stop.

The second half of the driving was not as good as the first. There were back ups in Connecticut and New Jersey and one epic road rage incident in NJ. The traffic was more or less stopped and a guy about my age in a white Dodge Ram truck with a bunch of Maga stickers came barreling across three lanes of stop and go, with the emphasis on stop, traffic and would have hit me if I hadn’t veered off the road as he wedged his truck in front of me.

Me being me, I honked my horn at him. He, being an angry entitled D#$&, gave me the finger, and then made many lewd hand and mouth motions in his extra large rear view mirror at me. I did not react, which made him even angrier and then he opened his door and started to get out of his truck on the highway. I also did not react to this which made him really mad, but as he started to get out he saw Russ in the passenger seat and he got back in and drove.

Russ had his hand on his phone ready to dial 911. I was planning on driving around the guy on the grass if he got out of his truck any further as the traffic had moved ahead of him. I’m not sure what he thought he was going to do to me, the honker, but I was fairly certain I could get away from him if he was on foot. Thankfully he did not have a gun, or at least thought better of using it. I’m certain my non-reaction face actually read to him as, “I know you have a little D#$&, since you are acting out those motions” and his angry at the world Maga self was itching for a fight. I was not going to give it to him.

As he drove away from me I pulled into the lane on the lane on the opposite side and took the next exit so Shay could pee and we could not be near that poor pitiful man. I wonder what he would have done if Russ had not been in the car? I know that if I had not honked this probably would not have happened this way, but if I had not veered he would have hit us.

Thankfully we eventually made it to Pennsylvania without any more incidents. Now for a good nights sleep before we are back on the road with other people who think they alone own it. No honking for me.