RIFLES AT DAWN

                         THE GREAT ADVENTURE, Part Two: ROAD TRIP!

The van was loaded with our possessions – 5,100 pounds, according to the United Van Lines people. We made good time on the road to our new home in coastal Connecticut. Going around Chicago was a breeze, although there was a bit more traffic than we expected. The Indiana Turnpike has to be one of the most boring drives imaginable. Nothing but flat land and no scenery.

We stopped for gas somewhere in eastern Indiana and figured we could make it to Toledo before dark. We pulled off the turnpike at the first Toledo exit around 7 PM, filled up with gas to be ready to roll in the morning, and then joined the line of cars at a Taco Bell for dinner. There was a nice hotel a few hundred feet from the Taco Bell so we just drove up, put on our plague masks, went in, and got a room. Easy-peasy.

The only thing on our mind was a good night’s sleep and an early morning departure, and that’s exactly what we got. It was just after 7 when we got back on the Turnpike and headed east again. I took the first shift driving and set the cruise control at 71 MPH. There was hardly any traffic. Somewhere just west of Cleveland my bride spotted a Schneider truck ahead of us, pulled out her camera, and documented it. A sign of home - Schneider National is headquartered in Green Bay. Sconnies call these trucks "pumpkins" because of their orange paint job.

To pass the time, we told stories. I first met the woman who would become my wife at work in 1988. I was 39 years old and she was just shy of 35 years old at the time. I’d had a career in music performance long before I met her – a career she knew very little about. She knew me more as a broadcaster than as a musician. So I regaled her with stories from my years in Los Angeles and tales from my international tours, recording sessions, and TV shows I was on. She shared with me stories from her formative years, her days as a "salad girl" at her parents' restaurant, her college days, and other aspects of her earlier life that I didn’t know about. It really helped pass the time.

For every "oh my lord, you did THAT in college?" that her stories elicited from me, there was a "you played with THAT band (or on that record)?" from her. 

Somewhere near Clarion, PA we stopped to fill an empty gas tank and each had a Quarter-Pounder at the McDonald’s across the street. We were making good time. We got back on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and by early afternoon were pretty sure we could make it to Bridgeport before nightfall. Hammer down!

The next gas stop was, according to the receipt from the gas station, at a place called Drums, PA. The most memorable thing about that stop was the Mexican restaurant across from the gas station. The signboard proclaimed, “Mexican food so good Trump wants to build a wall around us!”

The condition of the roads around Scranton, PA, where we took a quick jog north to catch Interstate 84, is generously described as abominable. The pavement is so rough you need to keep both hands on the steering wheel. Disgraceful. We crossed the Hudson River just north of Newburgh, NY. Shortly thereafter we were in Connecticut. In Danbury, we picked up Highway 7 South to Interstate 95 in Norwalk, and suddenly we were about 10 minutes from our destination, Bridgeport.

During one of my wife’s driving shifts that afternoon, I got on the phone and made hotel reservations for us. We knew we’d be spending several days in a hotel, waiting for our furniture to arrive, so we wanted to stay at a place that had decent amenities. The one that looked best to me was a Holiday Inn in downtown Bridgeport, so I made the call. After we’d gone through the long process of name, credit card number, blah blah blah, the guy paused for a long time. “I’m sorry; I now see that the hotel is actually closed because of Corona Virus.”

This would be our first real awakening of what it’s like to live in the New York City metro in the time of Covid-19.

The man on the phone said they had a “sister hotel” nearby that he could book us at; a Best Western a few blocks away. I asked how he could book for both Holiday Inn and Best Western, and got some mumbo-jumbo about how the number that I called – which was the number listed on the homepage of the Holiday Inn on Main Street in Bridgeport – was actually the number for a second-party booking service.

We decided to book the Best Western for two nights, which would give us a place to land while we surveyed the territory. If we liked it, we’d extend our stay; if we didn’t; we’d find a better hotel. So, we committed to $298. It was about 7:30, overcast with sprinkles, and we got in line at a Wendy’s and had burgers for dinner. Then we entered the address of the Best Western into the Waze app, and in a few minutes, we arrived.

And thus began a nightmare of epic proportion.

The first clue was the empty parking lot. The second clue was the sign on the front door of the hotel, listing a number to call for information – a number that rang and rang, and was never answered. By now it was dark, it was raining, and we had nowhere to stay. We realized that the Best Western, like the Holiday Inn, was closed because of the plague.

I called the number I’d called to make the reservation and got the royal runaround. Meanwhile my wife was on the phone to our daughter, who lived a few miles from where we were, asking for advice in finding a hotel. Bingo! The Hi-Ho Hotel (who could possibly make up a name like that?) was indeed accepting reservations from “personnel involved in essential services.” Thank heaven, moving across the county is considered an essential activity.

The rigmarole to get into this hotel was daunting. The Hi-Ho is an automated facility. There are no employees on site. You make your reservation online, and when you arrive at the Hi-Ho, there’s a number you call to get your room number and the access code for the lock on the room door. The room we got was 317, which meant lugging several thousand pounds of suitcases up two flights of concrete stairs.

The room was bare-bones. Bed, TV, bathroom, and an eclectic lounge chair straight out of 1968. Hippy chic. The TV allowed limited choices, and we wound up watching a recording of that evening’s 6 PM news on WABC-TV New York, followed by a recorded newscast from Permian, TX (???) so we called it a night and went to sleep, thankful that we had a roof over our heads but with a firm resolve to find a better hotel for tomorrow.

We awoke around 7, showered, and set about the task of finding lodging. I theorized that we might have better luck looking for a hotel in Norwalk, which we’d gone through on the way to Bridgeport. I seemed to remember there were a bunch of national-chain hotels visible from the highway as we rolled past Norwalk early last evening.

The first call was to the Courtyard by Marriott hotel on Main Avenue in Norwalk, and the young woman who answered, Miranda, was a friendly and competent young woman. After we determined that they were in fact open, and were in fact accepting reservations from “personnel involved in essential activities,” I hit her with the key question. “Miranda, are you actually in Norwalk, actually in the hotel?” She paused and said, “yes, I’m on the phone at the check-in counter at the hotel in Norwalk.” Just had to be sure we weren't being led down the primrose path again.

A half-hour later, following another tortuous session of lugging suitcases down two flights of concrete stairs at the Hi-Ho and a quick jaunt west on the Merritt Parkway, we met Miranda in the lobby of the Courtyard by Marriott in Norwalk. "So you're the folks moving here from Wisconsin" she said. "Nice to meet you!"

The room was nice, clean, and had all we needed: a King-size bed, a big TV, a nice couch and chair, a refrigerator, and a coffee maker. Nirvana. This would be our base of operations for the next four days as we waited for the moving van to arrive in Bridgeport.

As we’d learned the evening before, things are locked down pretty tight in the New York City metro. Hundreds of people were dying of the plague every day in New York City at that time, and everybody was wearing masks and gloves.

Although we’d left Madison on April 28, the close of escrow on the Compound was on May 6^th. If you’re the seller, you need not be present at the close, but you have to sign documents in front of a notary. Our closing agent back in Madison made an appointment for us to meet a notary at the hotel at 10 AM on Monday,  May 4^th. We’d sign the requisite paperwork, the notary would witness, and then overnight the paperwork back to Madison.

A short time after I spoke with our closing agent, the notary called. Her name was Dorothy, she’d be coming down to Norwalk from her home a few miles away in Danbury with the appropriate papers. After we confirmed time and place, Dorothy said “and, even though it goes without saying, I’ll expect both of you to be wearing masks and gloves.”

During the plague, hotels operate quite differently. You become your own housekeeper. They drop off clean linens and towels in front of your door early in the morning; you change the bed and towels and put them back in the plastic bag and set it outside your door. Hotel staff, such as it is, does not enter your room. Small price to pay for good lodging.

The little blue “x” at the top of this photo marks our hotel, Courtyard by Marriott. The main drag of Norwalk is, like most other streets everywhere in the vast NYC metro, largely deserted. Norwalk is a city of about a hundred thousand. It’s home to some huge multi-national corporations, like Xerox, Pepperidge Farms, Frontier Communications, and many others. There are huge new corporate office buildings lining the streets – some of which you can see in the photo above – but they are now vacant.

Going out for lunch or dinner means driving to one of the few restaurants still open, waiting in line behind a whole lot of other cars, and choosing from a limited menu. Very limited. And prices? Welcome to the New York Metro. Two burgers, medium fries, large diet cola – fifteen dollars, please. We stopped once at a Dunkin Donuts to get breakfast for the next morning. Three donuts, five dollars.

We’d expected our furniture to arrive on Tuesday morning, May 5^th, but our van driver called Monday night and said he’d been delayed and would be there early Wednesday afternoon.

Nothing we could do about it. We booked another night at the hotel and crossed our fingers that we’d see our stuff and officially move in, in Bridgeport, on Wednesday. And that’s what happened.

(Stay tuned for the final installment, The New Place, which will be posted tomorrow.)