My luck traveling back and forth via Burlington was not very
good. I was able to get to Burlington
pretty consistently, but the return was never routine. Even on the outbound leg, there was always
something going on about the drive over to Montpelier. It might be precipitation – which was a
problem in that it wasn’t usually rain.
After the weather got a little warmer, that snow started to melt, and
late at night you would get pretty heavy fog.
Heavy fog, the dark, and roads you’re not familiar with make for a tough
trip. There was so little traffic on
I-89 South that you couldn’t follow someone’s tail lights in the hope that
they, at least, knew where they were going.
There were no other cars!
So I would often arrive at the guest house, at 10:30 or
11:00 at night, completely wired from the drive. I didn’t want to take anything for sleep,
because I usually feel like I’m in a daze the next day when I do that, so it
would take forever to go to sleep. Not
an ideal situation for a consultant to show up for work totally exhausted.
I had toyed with the idea of traveling via Bradley
International, aka Hartford. I could get
a non-stop on American, rent a car, and get to Montpelier in three hours. I decided to try it once daylight savings time
started, to give myself a chance to get there before it was totally dark.
My trip up on American was nice. I had an aisle seat on a B-737. I got some lunch at the Admiral’s Club at
DFW, a chicken quesadilla. It was Easter
Sunday. The plane got to Hartford on
time, and I quickly (no checked bag) went to the Hertz off-airport
location. Bradley is a small airport and
is easy to manage. I got the car and
followed the signs to the interstate. I
had hooked up my iPhone with an aux cable to the jack in the car, so I had some
music to listen to.
The drive was not all that enjoyable, but it was okay. I stopped at a rest stop after crossing into
Vermont, and it was just a rest stop.
Bathrooms and vending machines and some benches, nothing else. I continued up I-91 and then I-89, but in
Vermont it seemed that every bridge was being worked on. The weather there beats up on the highways,
and especially the bridges. There are a
lot of bridges because the state is mountainous and there are lots of little creeks
and rivers you cross, and the interstate basically is in the valley carved out
by the Connecticut River. Nobody where I
live has ever heard of it, but the Connecticut River is a big deal. Every bridge was down to one lane, and
sometimes the one lane was more like three fourths of a lane. They can’t work on the roads in the winter,
and they try to fix everything before the summer vacation season.
Traffic was very light, but most of it was trucks. I wound into Montpelier just as it was
getting dark. On Easter everything was
closed, except Shaw’s, the supermarket, and it was getting ready to
close. I ran in there and got some
frozen something to cook in the guest house’s microwave. And some wine.
So this night I got some decent sleep, and showed up for
work in a better condition than other times.
I wasn’t sure this three hour drive thing would work, though. I’m not a good long distance driver –
whenever we go anywhere of any distance it seems my wife drives more than I
do. (Except in Ireland – that’s another
story.)
At the end of the week, I left the office after lunch on
Thursday. My flight from BDL (Bradley
International) left a little before 6 PM, and I felt I needed to allow an hour
for rental car return and getting to the terminal, and then allow for security,
and have a cushion. Let me tell you –
giving yourself extra time while traveling is the most important thing you can
do for yourself.
I drove south on I-89, which is kind of a winding road for
an interstate. It follows the aforementioned
Connecticut River, which is a winding river.
About half an hour south of Montpelier it was drizzling. Up ahead, I saw a big bird in a field. It was a wild turkey! I had never seen one before. It was a nice looking bird, but I was driving
65 miles per hour on a slightly wet road, so I couldn’t look at the bird. The next thing I saw was this huge bird
flying straight into the front of my rental.
One bad thing about cruise control – if I had my foot on the gas, I
would have slammed on the brake and missed the bird, but I didn’t react fast
enough. The turkey crashed into the
front of the car, and feathers flew everywhere.
He bounced off my car and hit in front of another car behind me – the
one who might well have crashed into me had I slammed on the brake to miss the
bird.
A short distance ahead there was a rest stop. I pulled over to see what I could see. What I saw was a hood with a dent big enough
to rest a basketball in, but nothing leaking out. There were no warning lights
and the car seemed to be running okay. I
called Hertz to report the accident.
They seemed to want me to take the car to the nearest Hertz facility,
which was probably back in Burlington, where I wasn’t going. They asked what was the closest major
city. I chose to define ‘major’ as ‘more
than 50,000 people’, so I replied “Montreal, and I don’t have my
passport.” We decided I would continue
to BDL.
As I crossed the border into Massachusetts, the sky opened
up. It was a torrential rain, an
absolute frog drowner. I was on the
interstate with, for the most part, 18 wheelers, throwing up huge amounts of
spray. I could not stop, because I was
trying to catch a flight home. It was
raining so hard that under any other circumstance I would have pulled over. But I did have to reduce my speed
considerably.
Finally, after about half an hour of storm, it eased
off. When I got to Hartford I found a
gas station and filled up my poor damaged rental. I drove to Hertz, and there were two ladies
waiting for cars to come back and be checked in. They just looked at me and didn’t say a
word. I said: “A wild turkey”. One of them replied, “You’re the second one
today”. Oddly, that did make me feel a
little better.
I had declined the coverages, stupidly, because the client
would have paid for them without question.
The damage ended up around $750, about half of which was paid by
insurance, although they have raised my rates every six months ever since.
When I got to the airport, I did something I rarely do. I went into the bar and had a Sam Adams. When that was gone, I had another. I bought a chicken sandwich on the plane. I was fortunate to have my wife pick me up at DFW.
I did not book my flights through Hartford any more.
Throughout Vermont, they have signs on the road warning you
about various kinds of wildlife. Moose
warnings, deer warnings, even bear warnings.
I never saw a turkey warning.
I needed to see one.
