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On the Riverway
Boy, have I got a story to tell you.
"You" being something of an affectation, of course, since I really have no idea if anyone is reading this. There've been darn few comments lately.
Anyway, on to the good stuff:
Oh hell, here's a LJ-cut.
On Tuesday afternoon, Teri came driving up in the Neon to pick me up. Taking a series of back roads, she ended up on Brookline Ave. headed towards what she calls "Hospital Row". But as she got into town, she ran into traffic that was bad even for Boston. The streets were jammed with cars, and in many cases the drivers were being complete bastards. Some were driving into full intersections on yellow lights, producing gridlock. People were leaning on their horns en masse.
She had been sitting in traffic on Brookline Ave. for a long time; it had been more than half an hour to go about twenty feet. But the next time she inched forward, she could feel that something was wrong with the car. It felt like she was dragging something on the left side.
She called me right away, but there wasn't much I could do, of course; I didn't know what the problem was. All I could do was offer emotional support, which is of limited value when your car is dying in the middle of a sea of stopped cars that are all being driven by maniacs.
As she continued to crawl forward, the smell of burning rubber was unmistakeable. It was almost impossible to get the car to move. In desperation, she took a left turn onto the Riverway.
Now, she had actually made quite a good choice this time. In the opposite direction the Riverway was jammed, but in the direction she was going it was almost totally empty; nobody wanted to go that way. As the car dragged its way along, however, a passing man told her that her left rear wheel was frozen - it wasn't turning at all. She pulled over and stopped.
I should explain that the Riverway connects to the Jamaicaway. It's one of the most beautiful roads I've ever seen, passing ponds, trees, and rivers, but it's not designed for heavy traffic. There are two lanes on each side, but they are incredibly narrow. And of course there are no breakdown lanes, and the curbs are too high to drive over. So she called me.
Fortunately it was close to quitting time for me - actually, it was after quitting time - and she was only a long but tolerable walk away. So I pulled on my boots and coat and started out. The footing was really bad on the sidewalks, though. The 36 inches of snow from the weekend had messed things up severely. It was hard not to twist an ankle or slip and fall, and I'm pretty clumsy. So I made my way as carefully and quickly as I could down Hospital Row.
Finally I got there, and it was really good to see Teri. But there was nothing to see about the left rear wheel; no ice, nothing stuck on or around it, but it simply would not turn. I tried backing up a little, but that didn't help either. So I called AAA. They told me that a tow truck would be out in about three hours. I explained that we'd probably need a flat-bed carrier, since the frozen left rear wheel would make ordinary towing impossible. They suggested that the car could be towed from the back, but I had to laugh at that. There was no way that a tow truck would be able to turn around where we were. Personally, I doubted that a truck would even be able to reach us in three hours. They told me they'd describe our situation to the towing company and left them decide what to send. We settled down to wait.
Now, my parents were taking care of Sebastian that day. I knew they'd been planning to take him out earlier in the day, but by the time we were in the car (around 5PM) I expected that they'd be home. So Teri and I kept calling. I say "kept" calling, because we never got an answer. Couldn't even reach the answering machine - the line just rang and rang and rang. Perhaps you'd have to be a parent to know how we felt, but if you are, you probably know what we were both thinking: a car accident, some sort of disaster, and we would never see our sweet little boy again. Not to mention my parents!
So we called, and called, and called, as people went insane outside on the street. Between calls (I tried to ration myself to one every fifteen minutes, since my battery was starting to get low), I kept an eye on the situation outside; it was really something.
The traffic was amazing. I've been driving in Boston for twenty years, and I had never seen anything like it. Nearly everyone was being a complete Masshole; the intersection of Brookline Ave. and the Riverway was ALWAYS jammed full, in the closest thing to a state of perfect gridlock that I have ever seen. I saw an ambulance sit in the middle of that intersection for over twenty minutes without moving an inch. People were literally hammering on their horns, some of them flinging themselves around in frustration. People were getting out of their cars and walking around. I began to seriously wonder if we might see a real riot, and if so, what we could do about it (nothing, if you were wondering). Finally at around 6PM I saw a tow truck coming past us and pulling up in front.
But it was a tow truck, not a flatbed carrier. As the driver came over, I greeted him and started to tell him that we needed a flatbed, when he interrupted - he wanted to know what the problem was. I explained, and he seemed surprised. "Wait a minute," I said, "didn't AAA send you?"
"No," he answered, "I'm from the State Police. They've ordered that your car be taken off the road NOW. It isn't legal to be pulled over on this street."
This seemed pretty bizarre to me; how could we help where we'd broken down? And we were actually on the ONLY piece of road for MILES where a broken-down car wouldn't block traffic. Nonetheless the driver told me that the state cop at the intersection had called him in to get us off the street in any way possible, frozen wheel or not. So he hooked up the car and told us that he would be towing it to a side street right away. But he wasn't allowed to give us a ride, so we'd have to walk in the street to meet him.
Traffic had started to pick up a little on our side, and I was wearing a long black coat and hat; Teri was in dark clothes, too. And night had come. We were in dark clothes on a dark but increasingly busy street with drivers who were nearly blind with rage and frustration. I walked behind Teri and took off my coat, since I was wearing a light shirt.
The tow truck came by with our car. The wheel sounded horrible. As it passed, I noticed that it would suddenly unfreeze for a second or so, and then freeze again and continue dragging. "Well, at least we know it's not the engine!" I said.
The tow truck stopped on the side street and we ran up to it. As we did, I could see a problem; there was nowhere to leave the car. The sidestreet was packed with snow, and the traffic was almost as bad as on the main roads. After a conversation with the tow truck guy, he told us that he had no choice but to take the car to the impound lot for the night. We'd have to pay $95 to get it out of impound the next day. He thought we could get AAA to reimburse us, since by that point he'd heard on the police radio that the police had ordered AAA and everyone else to stay the hell out of the area that evening.
After some discussion we worked out the details. A towing company would pick up the car from him the next morning, and take it to a repair place that he recommended. That settled, Teri and I started walking.
It was a cold, long walk in slush and snow. Neither one of us was wearing good boots, and our feet were freezing. After a quick stop in my work building, we continued towards the Green Line trolley. There was still no answer from my parents, and it was well after 7PM. We were very worried, although we didn't discuss it.
But the traffic was so bad that it was even screwing up the trolley! Cars were pulling across the track and getting jammed there. At Coolidge Corner it was even worse: a semi was across the tracks. The driver opened the doors and announced "Up to you, folks. I don't know when this will clear."
"What do you want to do?" Teri asked.
"Stay here," I said. "It's still a long cold walk."
"I'm worried about the baby," she replied, and with that, we got off the train and started walking down Beacon Street.
Needless to say, no more than a minute later the truck managed to get off the tracks and the trolley passed us by.
[That's our luck - really! -Teri]
But eventually we got to my parents place and were overjoyed to see that everyone was fine - for some reason their phone hadn't been ringing and their answering machine hadn't been working, that was all.
There's a bit more to the story, but the short version is that after dealing with some general insanity and bad business practices, we eventually got the car fixed on Thursday for $200. The back brakes had been trashed. We'd had them worked on not long before, and Teri takes good care of her car, but apparently a spring had broken - and we were told that nobody could have reasonably been able to predict that. Sitting in traffic for hours on end with water everywhere might have contributed to the problem, apparently.
Okay, enough.
I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that last Saturday, Sebastian went down the stairs by himself. I was trying to take his hand at the top of the stairs, but he pulled his hand away and firmly said "No, I do it."
He proceeded to walk all the way down the stairs all by himself, like a big boy, and when he reached the bottom grinned and gave his daddy a huge hug.
"You" being something of an affectation, of course, since I really have no idea if anyone is reading this. There've been darn few comments lately.
Anyway, on to the good stuff:
Oh hell, here's a LJ-cut.
On Tuesday afternoon, Teri came driving up in the Neon to pick me up. Taking a series of back roads, she ended up on Brookline Ave. headed towards what she calls "Hospital Row". But as she got into town, she ran into traffic that was bad even for Boston. The streets were jammed with cars, and in many cases the drivers were being complete bastards. Some were driving into full intersections on yellow lights, producing gridlock. People were leaning on their horns en masse.
She had been sitting in traffic on Brookline Ave. for a long time; it had been more than half an hour to go about twenty feet. But the next time she inched forward, she could feel that something was wrong with the car. It felt like she was dragging something on the left side.
She called me right away, but there wasn't much I could do, of course; I didn't know what the problem was. All I could do was offer emotional support, which is of limited value when your car is dying in the middle of a sea of stopped cars that are all being driven by maniacs.
As she continued to crawl forward, the smell of burning rubber was unmistakeable. It was almost impossible to get the car to move. In desperation, she took a left turn onto the Riverway.
Now, she had actually made quite a good choice this time. In the opposite direction the Riverway was jammed, but in the direction she was going it was almost totally empty; nobody wanted to go that way. As the car dragged its way along, however, a passing man told her that her left rear wheel was frozen - it wasn't turning at all. She pulled over and stopped.
I should explain that the Riverway connects to the Jamaicaway. It's one of the most beautiful roads I've ever seen, passing ponds, trees, and rivers, but it's not designed for heavy traffic. There are two lanes on each side, but they are incredibly narrow. And of course there are no breakdown lanes, and the curbs are too high to drive over. So she called me.
Fortunately it was close to quitting time for me - actually, it was after quitting time - and she was only a long but tolerable walk away. So I pulled on my boots and coat and started out. The footing was really bad on the sidewalks, though. The 36 inches of snow from the weekend had messed things up severely. It was hard not to twist an ankle or slip and fall, and I'm pretty clumsy. So I made my way as carefully and quickly as I could down Hospital Row.
Finally I got there, and it was really good to see Teri. But there was nothing to see about the left rear wheel; no ice, nothing stuck on or around it, but it simply would not turn. I tried backing up a little, but that didn't help either. So I called AAA. They told me that a tow truck would be out in about three hours. I explained that we'd probably need a flat-bed carrier, since the frozen left rear wheel would make ordinary towing impossible. They suggested that the car could be towed from the back, but I had to laugh at that. There was no way that a tow truck would be able to turn around where we were. Personally, I doubted that a truck would even be able to reach us in three hours. They told me they'd describe our situation to the towing company and left them decide what to send. We settled down to wait.
Now, my parents were taking care of Sebastian that day. I knew they'd been planning to take him out earlier in the day, but by the time we were in the car (around 5PM) I expected that they'd be home. So Teri and I kept calling. I say "kept" calling, because we never got an answer. Couldn't even reach the answering machine - the line just rang and rang and rang. Perhaps you'd have to be a parent to know how we felt, but if you are, you probably know what we were both thinking: a car accident, some sort of disaster, and we would never see our sweet little boy again. Not to mention my parents!
So we called, and called, and called, as people went insane outside on the street. Between calls (I tried to ration myself to one every fifteen minutes, since my battery was starting to get low), I kept an eye on the situation outside; it was really something.
The traffic was amazing. I've been driving in Boston for twenty years, and I had never seen anything like it. Nearly everyone was being a complete Masshole; the intersection of Brookline Ave. and the Riverway was ALWAYS jammed full, in the closest thing to a state of perfect gridlock that I have ever seen. I saw an ambulance sit in the middle of that intersection for over twenty minutes without moving an inch. People were literally hammering on their horns, some of them flinging themselves around in frustration. People were getting out of their cars and walking around. I began to seriously wonder if we might see a real riot, and if so, what we could do about it (nothing, if you were wondering). Finally at around 6PM I saw a tow truck coming past us and pulling up in front.
But it was a tow truck, not a flatbed carrier. As the driver came over, I greeted him and started to tell him that we needed a flatbed, when he interrupted - he wanted to know what the problem was. I explained, and he seemed surprised. "Wait a minute," I said, "didn't AAA send you?"
"No," he answered, "I'm from the State Police. They've ordered that your car be taken off the road NOW. It isn't legal to be pulled over on this street."
This seemed pretty bizarre to me; how could we help where we'd broken down? And we were actually on the ONLY piece of road for MILES where a broken-down car wouldn't block traffic. Nonetheless the driver told me that the state cop at the intersection had called him in to get us off the street in any way possible, frozen wheel or not. So he hooked up the car and told us that he would be towing it to a side street right away. But he wasn't allowed to give us a ride, so we'd have to walk in the street to meet him.
Traffic had started to pick up a little on our side, and I was wearing a long black coat and hat; Teri was in dark clothes, too. And night had come. We were in dark clothes on a dark but increasingly busy street with drivers who were nearly blind with rage and frustration. I walked behind Teri and took off my coat, since I was wearing a light shirt.
The tow truck came by with our car. The wheel sounded horrible. As it passed, I noticed that it would suddenly unfreeze for a second or so, and then freeze again and continue dragging. "Well, at least we know it's not the engine!" I said.
The tow truck stopped on the side street and we ran up to it. As we did, I could see a problem; there was nowhere to leave the car. The sidestreet was packed with snow, and the traffic was almost as bad as on the main roads. After a conversation with the tow truck guy, he told us that he had no choice but to take the car to the impound lot for the night. We'd have to pay $95 to get it out of impound the next day. He thought we could get AAA to reimburse us, since by that point he'd heard on the police radio that the police had ordered AAA and everyone else to stay the hell out of the area that evening.
After some discussion we worked out the details. A towing company would pick up the car from him the next morning, and take it to a repair place that he recommended. That settled, Teri and I started walking.
It was a cold, long walk in slush and snow. Neither one of us was wearing good boots, and our feet were freezing. After a quick stop in my work building, we continued towards the Green Line trolley. There was still no answer from my parents, and it was well after 7PM. We were very worried, although we didn't discuss it.
But the traffic was so bad that it was even screwing up the trolley! Cars were pulling across the track and getting jammed there. At Coolidge Corner it was even worse: a semi was across the tracks. The driver opened the doors and announced "Up to you, folks. I don't know when this will clear."
"What do you want to do?" Teri asked.
"Stay here," I said. "It's still a long cold walk."
"I'm worried about the baby," she replied, and with that, we got off the train and started walking down Beacon Street.
Needless to say, no more than a minute later the truck managed to get off the tracks and the trolley passed us by.
[That's our luck - really! -Teri]But eventually we got to my parents place and were overjoyed to see that everyone was fine - for some reason their phone hadn't been ringing and their answering machine hadn't been working, that was all.
There's a bit more to the story, but the short version is that after dealing with some general insanity and bad business practices, we eventually got the car fixed on Thursday for $200. The back brakes had been trashed. We'd had them worked on not long before, and Teri takes good care of her car, but apparently a spring had broken - and we were told that nobody could have reasonably been able to predict that. Sitting in traffic for hours on end with water everywhere might have contributed to the problem, apparently.
Okay, enough.
I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that last Saturday, Sebastian went down the stairs by himself. I was trying to take his hand at the top of the stairs, but he pulled his hand away and firmly said "No, I do it."
He proceeded to walk all the way down the stairs all by himself, like a big boy, and when he reached the bottom grinned and gave his daddy a huge hug.
no subject
*wave*
no subject
(Anonymous) 2003-12-11 07:10 pm (UTC)(link)This last storm really seems to have messed things up big time.
Two days this week I ended up walking a good portion of the way to
work because, well, the trolleys were packed to the gills and going
really slowly and I'm a bit claustrophobic and just can't take that.
Mind you, Monday and Tuesday there really wasn't much reason for the
T to be running mostly one car trains during the morning rush and
apparently at such infrequent intervales that by my stop (the second
on the C line) they were close to packed already.
However, I'm at least pleased that my room hasn't been flooded; I
attribute that to the additions a neighbor made to the drains
and my work to shovel off the area around the back door, and to
the reduced number of leaves.