Some people would probably pay big money for the trip I recently got to take for free. Having set aside two days to drive from the kettle moraines of southern Wisconsin to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, I found myself situated to take a side trip to pick up a 90-year-old typewriter from a member of Reddit’s Typewriter community. I had tried for months to get someone else to make this trip up into the mountains, but when my grandmother passed away a couple of weeks ago I knew that I would be able to make that trip myself.
Now, I should have been prepared for my journey after hearing repeated tales of coal trucks being sent up inappropriate roads when they tried to avoid paying a $20 toll on the West Virginia Turnpike. The non-Turnpike roads are lighter and narrower, and cross the mountains in a series of switchbacks. The heavy trucks can’t make the turns, and they get stuck. On this particular road, stuck coal trucks have been a common occurrence. (In fact, a coal truck was stuck there a few hours before visitation began at the funeral home, and we worried that my uncle would need to take a three-hour detour to get off the mountain. Luckily, the road was not as thoroughly blocked as we had supposed.)
Up the road a few miles from my grandmother’s house is Hutch, the only tow driver who can get the coal trucks un-stuck. His fee is $6000. You would think that after the first un-stucking all the coal companies would know that it was safer and more fiscally responsible to send the trucks up the Turnpike. But they keep coming, because every driver thinks he’s the one who can make it through, and they keep getting stuck. (Hutch is doing well for himself.)
All this is to say that I should have been slightly wary when I used Google Maps to suggest the route between Hansford and Tornado. In fact, Google Maps suggested three routes for me, and I chose “fastest route” without carefully examining the specific roads that I would take. (Note To Self and Others: carefully examine the specific roads that you will take.)
When I chose the “fastest route” option, I made the assumption that I would be traveling on an interstate highway for as long as possible, then taking state and county roads as needed until I arrived at my destination. You know, just like in the physics story problems. I was so wrong.
Somewhere in the settings, I must have clicked on an option for either “Take Me on the Scenic Route at All Costs” or “Please Bring Me Within Sight of a Fast Road, but Make Sure I Don’t Get to Travel on It.” Because I traveled next to I-64 all the way to the other side of Charleston. Some of the roads I went on looked like the borders of a parking lot. I was puzzled, but I continued. Other sections of the route were like a drive down Memory Lane; I had made the trip to West Virginia 1-2 times a year over the course of my life, and naturally the roads had improved and changed over time. So it had been a while since I had actually traveled on the actual roads we had used when I was a child with nothing to do on the trip but look out the window and pass the snacks.
Finally I got on the roads that went up into the hills, as I expected. What I didn’t expect were the areas where work crews were flagging motorists through sections of one-lane roads as they patched potholes. We are already talking about two-lane county roads that wind up (and down) through the mountains, with sharp curves and no shoulders to speak of. Google Maps seemed to have no idea that I would also have to wait, stopped, on steep inclines.
But eventually I made it to the house of the typewriter owner. I parked in his driveway, he carried the 1934 Royal out to the car and loaded it (thank you, Brandon!), and I slipped him a thank-you card containing a modest amount of compensation for the “free” machine.
After I found a way to turn around, it took a surprisingly short amount of time for me to reach a more major road. Soon, I thought, I would be back on I-64 and headed for Ohio.
Not so fast. As I sat at an intersection where most cars took the left turn to reach the highway (turning right would have taken me into the Kanawha River), my map urged me forward: under the I-64 bridge high overhead, and along the river on what is now Route 817 and used to be, decades ago, old 35. I knew I would see some familiar sights along the route, so I went straight ahead to Winfield on another stretch of Memory Lane.
And after Winfield, the route sent me not to Route 35 but on a bridge that crossed the river and took me down Route 62 towards (vaguely) Point Pleasant. This is the point at which I really should have told the navigator, “No, thank you, I’ll take the big road now.” (I could have also said, “Learn how to pronounce ‘Kanawha’,” but I didn’t do that, either.)
I had never taken this route before, and the towns — Buffalo, Eleanor, Arbuckle, Leon, Grimms Landing — were new to me. Surely, I thought, I would soon be in Point Pleasant and could cross back over to Route 35, go over the Ohio River, and take the roads that I knew. But no. This road wound on and on along the river, and suddenly, just before I arrived in Point Pleasant, I was directed to turn left and go up a huge hill. Well, maybe it was a shortcut. I was halfway up before I realized that the road wasn’t even paved. Rainstorms from the day before had created several potholes, and I started to worry that the road would be washed out. It wasn’t, but on the tricky descent I realized that, once again, I was on a road that was far below the modern one.
In Point Pleasant I didn’t even see an option to go south and cross the Kanawha before crossing the Ohio. Instead I was given directions to head north on a small road next to the river on the West Virginia side. I went north for about 30 miles before getting to cross the Ohio, and then the journey became truly frustrating.
Could I have turned around? Well, yes, but I didn’t know how much time that retracing my steps would add to the trip. One thing I did know is that I was already late getting to Athens, where I had an appointment with the library’s archivist. So, rather foolishly, I kept driving forward.
I wanted to trust the directions, I really did. But now it was clear(er) that something was truly awry. No matter how I tried to access Route 33 — which was RIGHT THERE — the app kept navigating me towards the oldest, narrowest, least maintained roads it could find. Even while I was making a right turn onto the road I needed to be on, the app suggested that I make a U-turn. Clearly I should have taken Rocksprings Road down past the creek instead of the four-lane divided highway heading directly toward my destination of Athens.
At long last, my language unrepeatable, I turned off Google Maps, resisted the urge to hurl my iPhone out the window, and vowed (very loudly) to make it to Athens solely by following the posted highway signs.
I made it, I found a place to park, I threw all the money I could into the parking meter, and I grabbed my things and scurried to the library to meet with the archivist. I was only about 30 minutes late. And the parking ticket was only $35, and my car wasn’t towed.
I think the real problem for Google here is that they’re sitting on a gold mine and they don’t even know it. Here they have directions to some of the most rustic roads in rural West Virginia — and they’re not charging extra to direct travelers to towns where the only business is the Dollar General. Why are they not monetizing this through a “scenic route” surcharge? Any old traveler can take the interstate and get from point A to point B quickly, and even stop at a gas station or a restaurant along the way. You don’t even need an app for that! If you want to see the real West Virginia, it should cost you. But in retrospect maybe it’s not a gold mine so much as an empty coal mine.
Knitwise, I did break out the Habit-Forming Scarf project while I was away from home, but only when there were just a few guests in the house. After a couple of days we had more people around, whether socializing, dining, or sorting through books and photos, and I was a part of all those activities. The next two days were filled with driving, researching, unpacking, cleaning, repacking, and unpacking again. So I wasn’t knitting then, either.
But hey! The scarf is now five inches long.
By working on this project out in the open, I may have confused some more distant relatives who have never seen me knit. They might not know about the throw and the ten pairs of slippers that I had knitted for my grandmother in the last several years. That might explain why they kept asking me what I was knitting. I don’t see anything here but a nascent scarf. It sure doesn’t look like a sweater, a sock, or a hat.
As I catch up on a week’s worth of work, as we enter advising season at the university, I might not have any large blocks of time in which to make a lot of progress on the scarf. (And it might well not be scarf weather when I have finished it.) But knitting two rows at a time will be something I can do between different tasks, to manage my stress levels and help me re-acclimate to Wisconsin society.
Chocolate Sheep 