The previous Friday: I drove to work still undecided about the Adirondacks. I hated to spend all that money on gas just for a 24-hour trip and yet I knew I needed it. I had some important thinking to do and felt the best place to get it done was around a campfire alone with a big sky overhead. In any event, the car was packed with everything I needed to hit the road right after work.
By three o’clock I was sure. I drove home to say goodbye to Savannah and do a couple of chores and then hit the open road by 4 p.m. According to my GPS, I would be arriving in Keene Valley a little past midnight. Normally, that would mean the public parking lot and sleeping next to my car under the stars, but I’d found a campsite just off the road ten minutes south of Keene Valley on my last trip and was planning on going there and setting up my tent.
It was a playoff night and without an audio book, I searched for a station that was covering the game. Kansas City was playing Baltimore and looking tough after sweeping the Angels in the second round. I was rooting for them since they were from our division and had nosed the Indians out of the playoffs. There is something quite soothing in listening to a well-called baseball game on the radio – for me anyway. I enjoy it more than watching and maybe it is just the return to my youth and the days of summer when a game would be playing somewhere as people in the neighborhood enjoyed whatever they were doing while listening to the play-by-play.
I exited I 90 in Utica and began the trek north on State Route 8 – a winding, scenic, smoothly paved road that passed through picturesque Adirondack towns and by many clear mountain lakes and streams. It was 10 p.m. and pitch black, so I was seeing none of it, though. I was traveling along at 60 mph when suddenly a large, beautiful buck ran across the road and into my headlights. I pulled hard to the left and the car swerved and slid to avoid the animal. I may have clipped his back leg, but was too busy correcting the vehicle back onto the road to have any knowledge of his condition. Heart pumping, I managed to gain control of the car and, with added caution, continued north. I pulled into the last open gas station in Poland, NY and filled up. As I left the station listening to the game, I thought I heard and unusual sound coming from under the car. Stopping and rolling down the window, I heard more clearly the all too familiar sound of a flat tire. Fortunately, I had enough air to return to the station and change the tire. One very nice thing about the Toyota Corolla is the spare is the standard sized tire for the car, not one of those silly doughnut things. I had to empty the entire contents of my drunk, jammed with tools and camping gear, onto the parking lot to reach that lovely spare though and, in 20 minutes, was back on the road.
The game went into extra innings and kept me company almost to my destination with KC winning in the tenth. I pulled off the road about 1 a.m. quite exhausted and ready to crash. To my surprise, someone had discovered my secret, hidden tent site and so I turned around and drove into Keene Valley and the public parking lot where I’d spent many a night sleeping next to my car waiting for dawn and a trip to the Noon Mark Diner for breakfast.
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