FRFF Recap
Jul. 24th, 2006 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jianantonicI still have a week's worth of internetting to catch up on, but I figured I'd start by posting an update about what the heck I was doing. I have pictures (and videos!) but I'm too lazy to fetch my camera from the car just yet, so those will come later, IF you ask nicely, of course. I didn't take many pictures after Friday, though, because it got really wet and I left my camera in the car for its own safety. Anyway...
With all the stress about the new location, we were really stressed that we wouldn't be able to camp all together like we always have unless we got there super early, so Jer and I stepped up and volunteered to drive through the night on Tuesday to be sure we were at the front of the line for when they let us in to claim our camp sites. Jer got off work by 10, and we were on the road to New York by 10:10. Shortly after passing Harrisonburg on 81, Jer noticed that a red light came on the dashboard, saying "Security." We were stumped, because my car doesn't have a security system (besides, you know, doors that lock), and my manual was not in the car (I'd taken it out to study at home about synthetic oil and I guess I never put it back. My bad.). We pulled over, because that's what you're supposed to do when a red light comes on on the dashboard, and Jer got out and started opening and closing doors (the best we could figure was "security" was fancy talk for "a door is open and the security of your moving vehicle is now compromised") while I called Adrian to see if maybe he knew what it could be. His best guess was also trying the doors, and when Jer got back in the car, it started without any problems, and the light was no more. Disaster averted, for the time being.
At about 2:30am, we were both pretty tired, and Jer wanted to stop to recharge - just grab something with lots of caffeine and sugar and get back on the road. We pulled into a gas station, loaded up on keep-us-awake food, and got back in the car. But it wouldn't start. Well, it *would* start, but it would then immediately stall out. It's automatic, too, so I'd never experienced this issue. At this point, I could've really freaked out. But I kept my cool remarkably well, thankyouverymuch. Jer called Josh, because Josh is pretty much an encyclopedia of knowledge, and I called Ahren, because I knew he'd be up still and if I didn't hear a friendly voice, I'd freak out. Ahren kept me calm by telling me about all the shit that was going down in Chicago - the bridge summer nationals were there last week - apparently Ian Boyd made an appearance (but only briefly), and one of the freebies they handed out in the women's game was anti-wrinkle cream, which did not go over so well.
Josh told Jeremy that lots of newer cars (mine's a 2004 Grand Am) are equipped with the basic pieces of a security system, so that if you decide you want one, they can just throw on a quick part and it's done (but it costs you lots of money). So Josh's guess was that the part of the security system that was installed in my car was fucking up the computer somehow, and the good news is that a garage could easily fix it. The bad news was that it was 3 in the morning and no garage was open at this point. We called AAA and they said they could tow us now or in the morning, but we wouldn't be back on the road until morning at the earliest. We opted for later and walked across the street to a hotel. By the time we checked in, it was almost 4, and we explained to the lady at the counter that we were only going to be in the room for a few hours, car trouble, blah, blah, could we please have the best possible deal you can muster? We ended up paying $100 for 3 hours of hotel room use, that's after a AAA discount. Bah!
In the morning, a very frustrated-but-still-not-freaking-out me called my mother to bitch about our problems. Really my thinking was she'd sympathize and offer to give us some money. I don't know why I thought that - she never has given us money before - but I was tired and desperate. She didn't offer cash, but she did decide to call in a favor for us. Apparently, the top mechanic dude at her regular dealership is a Hokie, and Mom invoked the Brotherhood. Within ten minutes, she was back on the phone with Jeremy, relaying the mechanic's instructions, and we were back on the road shortly thereafter. Josh had been right about the security thing, and all we needed to do was reset the computer in the car - a CTRL ALT DEL for cars, involving a complicated pattern of keyturning that should be much simpler but isn't because this way when your car fucks up, you have to take it somewhere and pay them to do it. Fuckers. But go Mom for getting us back on the road.
Unfortunately, we were still five hours away from Hillsdale and no longer in position to make it for the land grab. At this point, I began frantically trying to reach Jill and Julius, who were going to be arriving shortly after us, but I couldn't, so I left messages with all the other campers in our group telling them that if they talked to Jillmom to let her know we had issues but were on our way.
Not 30 minutes after getting back on the road, we ran into our next hurdle. There was some construction on 81, and the road narrowed to one lane. It was still early enough in the day and enough not a weekend that traffic wasn't congested or stalled here, but just as the road became one lane (right lane ended, everyone merge left), an 18-wheeler comes barrelling up (ah Mike O'Malley!) on our right honking his horn and moving in on us. WTF? Jer slammed on the brakes and had to swerve - we narrowly escaped death by smush, but my car's brand new tires were not so lucky. In the skidding action, they were stripped down to nothing. (This is not foreshadowing. We had enough car trouble at this point, and the gods of travel showed us mercy hereafter by not having us blow a tire - but that was lucky.) Anyway, we were freaked out, but okay, and we got back on the road immediately. When the construction ended, the truck that had tried to kill us moved over to the right lane and we passed him. Now, get this - the driver gave us the finger! What? Fuck us for not dying like you wanted us to?! Fuck that shit! I wrote down every identifying piece of information on that truck. License plate, cab number, company name, driver's description, mile marker on the highway, etc...then I 411ed the company (no how's my driving sticker - I seriously recommend that Metropolitan Trucking reconsider this) and got a nice lady on the phone to whom I told my story. She was extremely apologetic, said she'd do what she could to get us new tires (yay!), and she took my name and number so she could be in touch with me about the situation, disciplinary action and so forth - I'd explained to her that now was not a good time for business dealings as we were campsite bound. I'm fairly confident that trucker will be looking for a new line of work shortly. I mean, what if it hadn't been Jer driving, but some little old lady with poor reflexes or bad hearing? Or someone with a weaker heart? I mean, I was hyperventilating for a while after this happened - it's scary shit - and someone with lesser ability to maintain his or her cool really could've been killed. But we made it to FRFF alive, with only one more teensy weensy problem. The directions I'd printed out were to Hillsdale, NY, and not to the specific festival location. I honestly don't know how the fuck that happened, because normally I'm really anal about directions and I know I typed in the exact address, but whatever. I also had an atlas and I knew what intersection we were looking for, so we found it without a problem.
When we got there, we found Jillmom at the very front of the line, explained to her our situation, and were let in shortly thereafter. I followed Jill's car on foot with Jer bringing up the rear in my car, and Julie in between us all, and we were able to find a perfect campsite. It was much less of an issue than we'd thought it would be. We were farther away from the mainstage than we have been in years past, but our location was really splendid.
At this point, I'm tired of writing about this and need to go unpack my car. To be continued...
With all the stress about the new location, we were really stressed that we wouldn't be able to camp all together like we always have unless we got there super early, so Jer and I stepped up and volunteered to drive through the night on Tuesday to be sure we were at the front of the line for when they let us in to claim our camp sites. Jer got off work by 10, and we were on the road to New York by 10:10. Shortly after passing Harrisonburg on 81, Jer noticed that a red light came on the dashboard, saying "Security." We were stumped, because my car doesn't have a security system (besides, you know, doors that lock), and my manual was not in the car (I'd taken it out to study at home about synthetic oil and I guess I never put it back. My bad.). We pulled over, because that's what you're supposed to do when a red light comes on on the dashboard, and Jer got out and started opening and closing doors (the best we could figure was "security" was fancy talk for "a door is open and the security of your moving vehicle is now compromised") while I called Adrian to see if maybe he knew what it could be. His best guess was also trying the doors, and when Jer got back in the car, it started without any problems, and the light was no more. Disaster averted, for the time being.
At about 2:30am, we were both pretty tired, and Jer wanted to stop to recharge - just grab something with lots of caffeine and sugar and get back on the road. We pulled into a gas station, loaded up on keep-us-awake food, and got back in the car. But it wouldn't start. Well, it *would* start, but it would then immediately stall out. It's automatic, too, so I'd never experienced this issue. At this point, I could've really freaked out. But I kept my cool remarkably well, thankyouverymuch. Jer called Josh, because Josh is pretty much an encyclopedia of knowledge, and I called Ahren, because I knew he'd be up still and if I didn't hear a friendly voice, I'd freak out. Ahren kept me calm by telling me about all the shit that was going down in Chicago - the bridge summer nationals were there last week - apparently Ian Boyd made an appearance (but only briefly), and one of the freebies they handed out in the women's game was anti-wrinkle cream, which did not go over so well.
Josh told Jeremy that lots of newer cars (mine's a 2004 Grand Am) are equipped with the basic pieces of a security system, so that if you decide you want one, they can just throw on a quick part and it's done (but it costs you lots of money). So Josh's guess was that the part of the security system that was installed in my car was fucking up the computer somehow, and the good news is that a garage could easily fix it. The bad news was that it was 3 in the morning and no garage was open at this point. We called AAA and they said they could tow us now or in the morning, but we wouldn't be back on the road until morning at the earliest. We opted for later and walked across the street to a hotel. By the time we checked in, it was almost 4, and we explained to the lady at the counter that we were only going to be in the room for a few hours, car trouble, blah, blah, could we please have the best possible deal you can muster? We ended up paying $100 for 3 hours of hotel room use, that's after a AAA discount. Bah!
In the morning, a very frustrated-but-still-not-freaking-out me called my mother to bitch about our problems. Really my thinking was she'd sympathize and offer to give us some money. I don't know why I thought that - she never has given us money before - but I was tired and desperate. She didn't offer cash, but she did decide to call in a favor for us. Apparently, the top mechanic dude at her regular dealership is a Hokie, and Mom invoked the Brotherhood. Within ten minutes, she was back on the phone with Jeremy, relaying the mechanic's instructions, and we were back on the road shortly thereafter. Josh had been right about the security thing, and all we needed to do was reset the computer in the car - a CTRL ALT DEL for cars, involving a complicated pattern of keyturning that should be much simpler but isn't because this way when your car fucks up, you have to take it somewhere and pay them to do it. Fuckers. But go Mom for getting us back on the road.
Unfortunately, we were still five hours away from Hillsdale and no longer in position to make it for the land grab. At this point, I began frantically trying to reach Jill and Julius, who were going to be arriving shortly after us, but I couldn't, so I left messages with all the other campers in our group telling them that if they talked to Jillmom to let her know we had issues but were on our way.
Not 30 minutes after getting back on the road, we ran into our next hurdle. There was some construction on 81, and the road narrowed to one lane. It was still early enough in the day and enough not a weekend that traffic wasn't congested or stalled here, but just as the road became one lane (right lane ended, everyone merge left), an 18-wheeler comes barrelling up (ah Mike O'Malley!) on our right honking his horn and moving in on us. WTF? Jer slammed on the brakes and had to swerve - we narrowly escaped death by smush, but my car's brand new tires were not so lucky. In the skidding action, they were stripped down to nothing. (This is not foreshadowing. We had enough car trouble at this point, and the gods of travel showed us mercy hereafter by not having us blow a tire - but that was lucky.) Anyway, we were freaked out, but okay, and we got back on the road immediately. When the construction ended, the truck that had tried to kill us moved over to the right lane and we passed him. Now, get this - the driver gave us the finger! What? Fuck us for not dying like you wanted us to?! Fuck that shit! I wrote down every identifying piece of information on that truck. License plate, cab number, company name, driver's description, mile marker on the highway, etc...then I 411ed the company (no how's my driving sticker - I seriously recommend that Metropolitan Trucking reconsider this) and got a nice lady on the phone to whom I told my story. She was extremely apologetic, said she'd do what she could to get us new tires (yay!), and she took my name and number so she could be in touch with me about the situation, disciplinary action and so forth - I'd explained to her that now was not a good time for business dealings as we were campsite bound. I'm fairly confident that trucker will be looking for a new line of work shortly. I mean, what if it hadn't been Jer driving, but some little old lady with poor reflexes or bad hearing? Or someone with a weaker heart? I mean, I was hyperventilating for a while after this happened - it's scary shit - and someone with lesser ability to maintain his or her cool really could've been killed. But we made it to FRFF alive, with only one more teensy weensy problem. The directions I'd printed out were to Hillsdale, NY, and not to the specific festival location. I honestly don't know how the fuck that happened, because normally I'm really anal about directions and I know I typed in the exact address, but whatever. I also had an atlas and I knew what intersection we were looking for, so we found it without a problem.
When we got there, we found Jillmom at the very front of the line, explained to her our situation, and were let in shortly thereafter. I followed Jill's car on foot with Jer bringing up the rear in my car, and Julie in between us all, and we were able to find a perfect campsite. It was much less of an issue than we'd thought it would be. We were farther away from the mainstage than we have been in years past, but our location was really splendid.
At this point, I'm tired of writing about this and need to go unpack my car. To be continued...
