Chardy Pass, the white lettering on the green background of the road sign proclaimed. I would never have noticed if my son Ted hadn’t said, “You’re breaking the law.”
In fact, the two cars that had just left the eastbound express lane on Massachusetts Route 90, less than a mile from the rest stop at Sturbridge, were breaking the law. The pass, no more than a semicircle of dirt, was obviously intended only for state police and other official vehicles. But these were desperate times that called for a counterattack.
It was Sunday and we were both returning from a weekend in upstate New York. On a good day, with a full tank, good weather, little traffic, and no stops, the trip from Warwick to Cooperstown can be done in just over four hours. It took us six hours.
When we left just before 10 a.m., it looked like a four-hour drive. Route 20, once the main thoroughfare in this area until the New York Thruway was built, was deserted. Views of the surrounding hills, mist falling off the ridges, opened to the distant Mohawk Valley. It was a late summer landscape of green fields of 6-foot-tall corn, clapboard colonial-style homes, farms off the road, and grazing cows.
After barely 20 minutes of driving, we were in for a surprise when we stopped to fill up in the village of Sharon. There was no empty pump and there were no parking spaces around Stewart’s supermarket. Drivers were trying to get in and out of the parking lot while parents were letting their children get out without waiting to find a parking space and letting them run into the store. The stress was mounting.
It was a harbinger of things to come, although it was another 50 miles before we hit Route 90 on the other side of Albany and the “real” test of the driver’s patience was put to the test.
At first it seemed like we had to weave through groups of slow drivers who refused to leave the left lane. We took breaks where Ted reached the speed limit, but then he saw a long line of vehicles slowly plodding along. Soon we were doing 35 miles per hour.
Luckily, Ted likes to analyze what influences behavior and patterns. It’s exciting, it relieves anger, and it makes you forget that this is anything but a pleasant experience. As he observed, traffic was moving in bursts, and there was likely to be a lane narrowing, a breakdown, or an accident. Once we got past that, everything would get back up to speed. But there was no accident or breakdown. Lane splitting for bridge construction didn’t seem to be the cause either. We turned on the radio to distract ourselves, anything to break the monotony of traffic.
As we approached the intersection with 84, things got worse. We were moving at a snail’s pace as agitated drivers jumped between lanes, making progress even more difficult for everyone. I began to people watch. The driver of the blue Amazon semi, a cigarette dangling from his wrist, seemed to be the only one who was coping with the conditions. The “little girl in the little car,” as we called her after we pulled four cars ahead to get back next to us, didn’t change position. She had her head in her left hand as if she was taking a nap. Then there was the car in front of us with the back window open. Was there a dog in the back seat? As we accelerated to a full 5 mph, I spotted a woman curled up and sleeping. In front of her was a Connecticut-registered car with veteran plates. I imagined a retiree at the wheel. Instead, it was a young man who looked like he was in high school. We were all about three feet apart, but he didn’t look over. In fact, none of the other drivers looked back. They stared stoically straight ahead as if that could change anything, or worked on their cell phones with their hands on the wheel.
The only angry expression came from the driver who honked his horn after Ted took advantage of the gap he had left open.
As we approached the Charlton rest area eastbound near Sturbridge, traffic started to flow in the right lane. When we reached the lot, it was obvious that many had thought this was a way to get to the front of the line. Cars backed up to the pumps while waiting to get back on the highway. Nothing gained and probably a lot lost.
But then there was no head of the snake. The whole snake had to move.
There was, however, a way out, the Clardy Pass. Certainly more people used it than the two drivers we saw.
It was tempting. Ted checked his phone. Traffic was supposed to resume westbound traffic past Charlton Plaza. Before we reached it, the express lane had been freshly paved and the rest of the road was being prepared for asphalt.
“That’s why,” Ted explained. It seemed highly unlikely that cars slowing down because of lanes could cause a slowdown of more than 20 miles.
I didn’t want to argue. I was far too happy to be traveling at 72 km/h.
