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Trip Day 1
First off, I suppose I should introduce you to The Beast. A 22-foot (6.7 m) Penske Moving truck towing a trailer with a station wagon on it. This picture was actually taken on the 8th, after much of the cargo (including the station wagon) had been offloaded, but you can still get the idea:
Dan did the driving in the morning, taking us through local roads until we got to I-80. I took over somewhere in PA:
Driving the van was an experience. It was huge. And noisy. And slow. With the trailer, we weren't supposed to go faster than something like 60mph, though we did push that a bit. Still, the thing couldn't go up hills without slowing significantly. Many were the times we found ourselves dropping to 45mph and then down and down. A couple of times, I ended up chanting "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can..." as we inched up a hillside at 25mph.
I learned to drive the truck fairly quickly, I think. The controls were the same as a car's, for the most part. Thank goodness for automatic transmission. (I've always held that only witches should drive stick...) The gas pedal was oddly binary, however. You either floored it or you didn't. I'm not sure how cruise control managed, but somehow it worked, and I was glad of that, too.
Maneuvering it did take some getting used to. The front turning radius was much tighter than I'd expected, but there was a heck of a lot that needed to follow. To turn a corner, you needed to swing wide, and wait to turn until you were almost up to the place you wanted to end up. Then cut the wheel all the way over and hope the trailer missed the curb.
There was no rearview mirror in the windshield, so everything had to be done with the side mirrors. Fortunately, those were the giant elephant ear ones, with very handy bubble mirrors underneath. You got a good long view in the flat mirror and a wide angle just below it in the very convex mirror just below. There was a blind spot right behind the truck, but luckily it was occupied mostly by the trailer (we could just see the wheels of the trailer, but not the trailer itself).
It was kind of fun sitting high up, too.
Oh, and I learned a few special rules. If the truck drops below a certain speed (50 or 45 or so, depending on the state), you have to put your hazard blinkers on. Also, as a courtesy, if you're driving a truck and another truck passes you, you blink your headlights when there's enough room for it to safely move back in to your lane. It's helpful when you're looking in the mirror and trying to judge whether or not you have the space for the whole back of the truck.
The truck had a 55-gallon tank. Luckily, it ran on diesel, but it was still about $80 every time we stopped to fill up. And that was a whole other learning experience. Finding the truck entrance. Maneuvering the truck up to the pump. Using the squeegee with the extra super long handle so we could reach the windshield. Finding a parking space big enough (especially at hotels and other places that weren't rest stops) was interesting, too.
Not much to say for the day specifically. We drove about 500 miles - somewhat less than our average, but we did get a later start and we also spent time navigating local roads. Nothing really remarkable to report about the PA countryside. We stopped for the night around 9pm in the little town of Milan. Milan, Ohio, that is.
From driving up and down 95 with Mom (something we did several years running, getting Grandpa's car down to Florida for the winter and then bringing it back up in the spring), I'd learned to book hotel reservations from the road using the AAA guide. The first place I tried had one room left. It had a single king-sized bed... and an in-room hot tub. I quickly decided that while I do like Dan... I don't like him that much.
Instead, I found a room at a Best Western. Decent place for a good price. They said they had wireless, but, even though the room was not very far from the lobby, both of our laptops struggled to get (and keep) any kind of signal. Surprisingly, that turned out to be a fairly consistent problem that week, no matter what hotel we stayed in.
Dan did the driving in the morning, taking us through local roads until we got to I-80. I took over somewhere in PA:
Driving the van was an experience. It was huge. And noisy. And slow. With the trailer, we weren't supposed to go faster than something like 60mph, though we did push that a bit. Still, the thing couldn't go up hills without slowing significantly. Many were the times we found ourselves dropping to 45mph and then down and down. A couple of times, I ended up chanting "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can..." as we inched up a hillside at 25mph.
I learned to drive the truck fairly quickly, I think. The controls were the same as a car's, for the most part. Thank goodness for automatic transmission. (I've always held that only witches should drive stick...) The gas pedal was oddly binary, however. You either floored it or you didn't. I'm not sure how cruise control managed, but somehow it worked, and I was glad of that, too.
Maneuvering it did take some getting used to. The front turning radius was much tighter than I'd expected, but there was a heck of a lot that needed to follow. To turn a corner, you needed to swing wide, and wait to turn until you were almost up to the place you wanted to end up. Then cut the wheel all the way over and hope the trailer missed the curb.
There was no rearview mirror in the windshield, so everything had to be done with the side mirrors. Fortunately, those were the giant elephant ear ones, with very handy bubble mirrors underneath. You got a good long view in the flat mirror and a wide angle just below it in the very convex mirror just below. There was a blind spot right behind the truck, but luckily it was occupied mostly by the trailer (we could just see the wheels of the trailer, but not the trailer itself).
It was kind of fun sitting high up, too.
Oh, and I learned a few special rules. If the truck drops below a certain speed (50 or 45 or so, depending on the state), you have to put your hazard blinkers on. Also, as a courtesy, if you're driving a truck and another truck passes you, you blink your headlights when there's enough room for it to safely move back in to your lane. It's helpful when you're looking in the mirror and trying to judge whether or not you have the space for the whole back of the truck.
The truck had a 55-gallon tank. Luckily, it ran on diesel, but it was still about $80 every time we stopped to fill up. And that was a whole other learning experience. Finding the truck entrance. Maneuvering the truck up to the pump. Using the squeegee with the extra super long handle so we could reach the windshield. Finding a parking space big enough (especially at hotels and other places that weren't rest stops) was interesting, too.
Not much to say for the day specifically. We drove about 500 miles - somewhat less than our average, but we did get a later start and we also spent time navigating local roads. Nothing really remarkable to report about the PA countryside. We stopped for the night around 9pm in the little town of Milan. Milan, Ohio, that is.
From driving up and down 95 with Mom (something we did several years running, getting Grandpa's car down to Florida for the winter and then bringing it back up in the spring), I'd learned to book hotel reservations from the road using the AAA guide. The first place I tried had one room left. It had a single king-sized bed... and an in-room hot tub. I quickly decided that while I do like Dan... I don't like him that much.
Instead, I found a room at a Best Western. Decent place for a good price. They said they had wireless, but, even though the room was not very far from the lobby, both of our laptops struggled to get (and keep) any kind of signal. Surprisingly, that turned out to be a fairly consistent problem that week, no matter what hotel we stayed in.