Canada geese and warm-blooded snowbirds have begun winging it southward. Getting from here to Florida is easier than getting the car down under the palm trees. On the eve of the World Series, my son-in-law Corey’s grandmother’s sister Ann called and asked me to drive her car to Naples.
“Some sort of snafu with the trucker,” she said.
I said no, but she persisted.
“Do you have EZ Pass?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have Sirius-XM Radio?”
“Yes.”
After some haggling we agreed to a deal that left neither of us thrilled. It’s not cheap to transport a car for 1,400 miles, and it’s not easy being the transporter. It’s a risk, and one speeding ticket more than ruins the net proceeds.
And so it was that on Sunday morning at 5:45 a.m. I was on the highway with all the other white SUVs bound for the sunshine state, down I-91 to the Merritt Parkway, over the Tappan Zee Bridge to the Garden State Parkway and onto I-95 across the Delaware Memorial Bridge into Delaware, Maryland and points south.
Along the way, I saw the aftermaths of three car accidents — on the Merritt in Connecticut, I-287 in New York, and on I-95 north of Baltimore, where a sedan was flipped on its roof and a medic was leaned over, peering through the driver’s side window.
In Virginia, a few miles south of D.C., all three lanes of traffic were cruising at 70 mph. I glanced at the GPS, looked up and saw the aforementioned traffic at a standstill. The object of my immediate attention was the late model SUV directly in front of me. My foot pushed on the brake pedal, the rear tires screeched, the open tin of cookies flew off the passenger seat and a red pickup truck swung left into the emergency lane and flew past my car and the next vehicle.
I’d missed rear-ending the SUV by about five feet. Everybody stopped and took a deep breath. No horns blared, nobody lowered the window to shake his fist. Everybody took a deep breath and started driving real slowly. The guy in the red pickup truck looked back and waved when I motioned for him to get back in the passing lane.
Ann was already in Florida with her husband Gary. I got her car at Dillon Chevrolet, and it wasn’t long before I realized I’d failed to ask another important question: “Is the Sirius-XM activated?”
It wasn’t.
Sports stations like WFAN in New York City and 97.5 The Fanatic came in around Philadelphia, but the South is dominated by religious shows and country music. In North Carolina, the scan button landed on 89.9 FM which was playing “Travelin’ Man,” “In the Still of the Night,” “Are you Lonesome Tonight,” and other outstanding doo wop music. After every song, a taped message by two youthful-sounding, southern accented women repeated: “Hi I’m Johnny… And I’m Ala. … And this is WZCR.”
No commercials. No static. Out of nowhere. Eventually the signal faded, but it was good while it lasted.
I passed a car with North Carolina plates that read KEROUAC (presumably after beat writer Jack Kerouac) and a pickup truck pulling a race car (No. 52) with “Bad News Travels Fast” written on the side.
Nearly every interstate travel hub is identical. They are located on the outskirts of a town or city with a variety of cookie cutter hotel, gas and restaurant franchises.
The general store off Exit 98 in Santee, S.C., sold minnows by the pound, and muscadine cider by the gallon. Next to it, Clark’s Inn offered a room and breakfast for $98 a night. I tuned into the World Series and saw that the Red Sox were ahead 3-1. Steve Pearce’s home run I’d heard broadcast on 1530 AM in Cincinnati was holding up better than me. I turned off the television, pulled up the covers and slept for seven hours.
After eggs, sausage patties, biscuits, home fries and coffee for breakfast, I embarked on the last 500 miles, through Georgia and North Florida, past road construction on Rte. 301 southwest onto I-75. It was tedious, and I was glad to arrive at the Holiday Inn Express in Sarasota.
Tim congratulated me for being a gold club member. “And because you are a gold club member, you get 300 extra points and a bottle of water to take to your room.”
I met Ann and Gary on Tuesday afternoon in the cell phone lot at Southwest Florida International Airport. She dropped me off at the JetBlue terminal and here I sit, high above courtside on Flight 904 headed for Hartford. That’s my week, how’s yours going?
Somebody needs to tell the Mullins Center PA announcer to tone it down. Noise doesn’t equal excitement. It’s the hockey that pumps up the fans, not over-exerted vocal chords over an amped-up microphone.
It’s nice having a Franklin County business sponsor the Minutemen, but I’m starting to cringe every time an opponent gets whistled off the ice because that means, “IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER SANDRI ENERGY POWER PLAY!”
ICE CHIPS: The climb continues to respectability for the Minutemen, who’ve gone from off the charts to start to 16th to 11th in both polls. … Message from Deerfield native Jamin Hemenway: “I saw the blurb on Penn State hockey and thought you should know there’s a Deerfield connection. Matt Lindsay is an assistant coach at Penn State. He’s the son of Jim Lindsay the long time DA hockey coach.
The UMass basketball season starts Tuesday against UMass-Lowell. The Minutemen have made four trips to the NIT this century and have appeared in one NCAA tournament this century. Their overall record is 314-274 and are 139-157 in the A-10.
Oh, the stories we could tell.
The schedule begins with seven non-conference pushovers, including Howard, UNH and Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached by email at sports@recorder.com.