Friday, July 25, 2008

Driving to Brooklyn

College is finally over for the year. I drove to Brooklyn from Franconia to pick up son and his stuff. The stuff level was so high I borrowed a real 3/4 ton Chevy pickup to do the job. It's about 300 miles each way. Traffic was light until I hit Connecticut. Then it got real heavy, 10 mph creep&beep along shoreline Conn. Turnpike. Trucks galore, all crawling along with the rest of us. You'd think some of them would be going piggy back on the trains just to save diesel fuel.
New York State continues it's distinguished career of illiterate, missing, and worthless road signage. Not sign one for the Whitestone Bridge off I95. I got pushed over Throgs Neck bridge while looking for signs to Whitestone. Not the end of the world, but not a real confidence builder either. Arrived around noon after driving thru rain showers. Took three hours to schlep all the stuff down from the fifth floor and tie a tarp over the top. Trip back was long. Didn't get in til after midnight. It rained and a lot of wet got under the tarp. Truck used 44 gallons of gas for $180. Round trip on Amtrak is a lot less than that. Truck only gets 16.4 mpg even with a very tall gear and a V6. My Caddy DeVille does a lot better at 27 mpg. I guess the truck has more frontal area, a worse drag coefficient and more weight to push up hills. Today the yard is full of drying stuff.

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