The Voyager's Last* Voyage

[dragonlady7]

*"last"ness of voyage still to be determined

30 September, 2004
entry originally composed in Crossgates Mall parking lot, Colonie, NY at about 1:30 pm. Now heavily revised.

Click "more" to read about my most recent and exciting brush with death. Yay for oncoming traffic and being able to stop but not slow down!

First, a little note on why I attempted this stunt in the first place: Cars have three separate brake systems. One controls the left front and right rear brake; the other controls the right front and left rear brake. The third is the parking brake, which has no hydraulics at all and is simply a wire-tension mechanical brake that locks the rear wheels. (It was formerly an emergency brake, to be used when the other brakes failed, or in some race cars as rear brakes when you wanted to lock the rear wheels but allow the front ones to turn-- handy in stunt driving, to be sure. But people complained that the handbrakes were too hard to use, and so they made them just parking brakes, and thus nearly impossible to use as emergency brakes. Thanks, fellas.)
I knew one of my braking systems was leaking, which meant it was a great deal less effective than it ought to be. However, the other brake line was perfectly operational, and the parking brake was undamaged. So, it wasn't entirely hare-brained of me to cross the state like this.

Not that I made it, but I wasn't totally insane for thinking that I had a decent shot at success.

The trip began, as all trips in a manual transmission with no starter motor must, with a push-start. This was a particularly inauspicious push-start, as we didn't achieve terminal velocity until well down the street. But it would have been cowardly to turn right around and call the whole thing off, so I persevered. Me and my minivan were driving 300 miles, leaky brake hoses, wobbly ball joint, bum battery, worn tires and all. We were on a quest to bring the minivan home to my parents' house, to either be fixed or scrapped at my father's discretion. And nothing so innocuous as having to run down the street panting and puffing trying to get the car up to 4mph was going to deter me.

As I had half-expected (and half not-expected), I made it through the bulk of the perilous journey unscathed, meeting numerous obstacles with aplomb (and some nifty downshifting to spare the brakes that really weren't working so great-- but were working). Stop signs, refueling, traffic jams, and even the Thruway being closed to all traffic in both directions didn't faze me: they had just re-opened the eastbound lanes after a massive accident that closed all westbound lanes for at least 12 hours and there was only a minor traffic jam. I crawled along in second gear, leaving a generous and leery margin between my bumper and the crawling semi in front of me, and all was peaceable and didn't require use of my brake pedal above three or four times. Except I nearly got hit by an ambulance that was leaving the accident site with no lights on, and had to brake hard when it cut me off. No real surprises there... Ambulances do that, as the Voyager and I have learned on previous occasions.

So I made it through about 5 hours, and more than 270 miles, and had decided that if anything were going to fail, it would have already. I seemed to be on track to actually get home, in one piece, under my own power, and was starting to feel pretty good about it.

Until the exit. I got to the Albany exit, the one for 87 & 90, and embarked upon my tried-and-tested slowing-down methods: give the brake pedal a firm push, downshift, let the transmission slow the car, then shove the pedal again and shift down. Well, the shoving the pedal part wasn't being as effective as usual on rain-wet pavement and a downgrade, so my transmission was rather unhappily doing more of the work than I would like.

And I wasn't slowing down enough. I changed lanes when the semi before me began to demonstrate how very much more effective its own downshifting was than mine, and sailed into the reasonably-clear left lane (also avoiding all those merging in from the on-ramp of another exit), but eventually the pickup in front of me was stopped, and I simply could not get below 15 mph. Fifteen miles per hour is much faster than I had ever realized before. And a pickup truck approaching you at fifteen miles per hour is a truly terrifying sight. I had the brake pedal on the floor now, and nothing was happening.

Nothing was happening, except that I was continuing to approach the pickup at fifteen miles per hour. Which, as I have mentioned, is really fast. I had no more gears to shift down, no more lanes to shift over; the open lane to my left was clearly for traffic coming the other direction.

But I had no choice. So I did the eminently reasonable thing and swerved into it, on the principle that there wasn't a car there NOW and there was a car in front of me RIGHT NOW indeed this very moment right now indeed right HERE. I whipped my foot off the clutch pedal and onto the parking brake, and stopped the car dead. In the oncoming lane. I got my foot back on the clutch, and thank God the car hadn't stalled (remember not having a starter motor? I sure did), and I had stopped the car, but I was in the oncoming lane (I know I repeat myself, but these things have a way of making an impression on you).

So I did what any sane human would: I took off the parking brake and put my blinker on, to get out of the oncoming lane. Patiently, the car behind me waved me in, thinking either that I was insane or that I was criminally impatient. Fortunately, this was upstate; in Westchester they'd've laughed at me and cut me off and left me there.

So I got back into the lane, very tentatively, hardly daring to raise my foot from the clutch. Even still, I rolled inexorably at two miles an hour through the lane, and didn't have enough room to straighten out. The lane beyond, which I was in danger of rolling into, was an E-Z Pass lane, and trucks were rumbling through at 15 miles an hour. I've already told you how god-damned fast that is, so I probably don't need to recount that my whole body was shaking as I realized I STILL couldn't stop.

This time, when I stomped the parking brake, I didn't get back on the clutch fast enough, and the car stalled. The car stalled. The car (remember the starter motor? I assure you, I did) stalled. I may have actually invoked the deity; it wouldn't be the first time on that trip. And, on the principle that it never hurts to try, I turned the key.

The car started, which astonished me so much that I immediately stalled it.

Fortunately it repeated the trick, and I very veeery gingerly steered myself straight and gave it the tiniest bit of gas, so that it rolled the 10 feet that was empty, and no more. But the car before me had gone through the tollbooth now, while I was manoevering; I had to roll further. I gave it a little more gas. It rolled through the toll booth. Right past the toll booth. I made it as far as the E-Z Pass stoplight before I managed to get the car into neutral so I could put the parking brake on without stalling it.

I got out of the car, money and Thruway ticket in hand, and ran back to the booth. It was then I realized how violently my legs were shaking. "I'm sorry," I panted to the tollbooth man, realizing that I was hyperventilating. "My brakes have just failed!"

"I'd wondered where you were goin'," he said, unconcerned. "Use yer parking brake."

"I did," I panted as he handed me my change and wished me a nice day. Had I been able to spare the energy, I would have given him an incredulous look, but as it was I simply said "You too" and sprinted back to my idling, BRAKELESS minivan.

A nice day indeed. I was in the leftmost lane. If I didn't get over through the fifteen tollbooth lanes, I would be on 87 North. Between me and the shoulder there was not only 87 North, but also I-90 East, and additionally, Rte 20 / Washington Ave / Crossgates Mall Rd. And, might I mention, a whole bunch of cars.

Nothing for it but to get over. I put on my blinker, and gritted my teeth, and threaded my way almost straight sideways through fifteen lanes of stark, staring idiots. Some of them, additionally, were gibbering idiots. There are many classes of idiots and I am certain that all of them were represented amply in my little sampling.

I missed the ramp to the parking lot, and nearly missed the shoulder entirely, but managed to collect my fainting common sense sufficiently to get the parking brake on at the bank of telephone booths just before the on-ramp to Rte 20. I believe I sat there for a full minute, just shaking, before I recollected myself enough to remember half the words to a Hail Mary (I am not so good with the Aves in a crisis, but afterward I am... still not so good; I may have gasped something about fruits of thy loom, but the Virgin is full of infinite grace and seems to have overlooked that in her ineffably gracious way).

Once I had somewhat garbledly expressed my incoherence to the intercessor (I may have intended to invoke her for protection or thank her, but I really don't know), it crossed my mind that perhaps if I looked under my hood, I would miraculously be able to ascertain why not only the faulty brake system had failed, but the other formerly sound one as well. Several frenzied laps of the car later, I ascertained only that the ground was wet so I could not see whether the other brake hose was leaking. I looked in the brake fluid reservoir. Yes, the line I knew was faulty had almost no fluid-- but the other one seemed fine. How could this be? How could both lines have failed entirely? Perhaps the pressure was simply very low and I somehow hadn't put the pedal all the way down. I got back in the car, took off the parking brake, and allowed it to roll very slightly backward down the incline. I put the pedal down. i put both feet on the pedal. It was down all the way. The car was still traveling somewhat less than a mile per hour, with no deviation from its speed, until I put the parking brake on again.

Fan-fucking-tabulous. I sat and thought it over. It was about 30 miles to home. It was not yet rush hour. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps I could do it. Could I? Well... But there was that intersection, that intersection on Hoosic St. just after the Collar City Bridge, the intersection that had nearly defeated me during the blizzard (I had continued straight past it and had come back down the hill through a parking lot to get onto the side-street, unable to stop and then start again at the red light to make a left turn up a steep hill). There was no way I could cope with that turn.

No, I thought. No. It is not worth the very high probability that I will wind up stopping the car by running it into someone else's car or perhaps a wall. I do not need the laurels of having brought it home with the rudder shot away and the masts gone. I have, on previous occasions, proven myself as a superbly competent handler of an automobile when focused and determined. This, I deemed, was a time to prove myself a possessor of at least a modicum of common sense, which I will freely admit is not something I have demonstrated in any great degree previously in my not-so-short lifetime.

So I did what any sane Kelly girl will do, and I called my Daddy. "Dad," I said, "I'm at the Exit 24 offramp and I have no brakes."

"That's no good," he said. "Can you get off the offramp? If you can, I'll come get you. Otherwise, I can't get to you."

This, I realized, was eminently reasonable. One cannot drive onto an offramp. "The closest ramp says Crossgates Mall Road," I said.

"Good," he said. "Go into their parking lot and I'll meet you there in half an hour."

I agreed on the specific parking lot (Crossgates, if any don't know, is the second-largest mall in New York State, second only to the wholly unremarkable and achingly repetitive Carousel in Syracuse, which is only larger because it has two of everything and five stories. Crossgates is a small country unto itself, and boy does it know how to sprawl) and steeled myself.

Another thing about Crossgates is that the access road to it is an extremely abrupt exit off of the tail-end of 87 before it becomes the Thruway. The highway ends, and you go from 80 to 0 in about two seconds. I had mistaken this ramp for a different access to the mall, but as I rounded the onramp, chugging away at 30 with my flashers on, I recognized it and immediately began to hyperventilate again as teenagers in borrowed cars shrieked by at 80.

I believe my monologue went something like this as I chugged my way up the exit ramp to the stop light to make a right turn. Mere words cannot convey the shrill horror of it, so I will resort to caps lock. "Ohgodohgodohgod, I can stop but I can't slow down, I can only stop, don't you dare fucking stop, don't you stop don't STOP GO GO GO AUGGHH" and I paused to breathe as I made the right turn behind a far-too-hesitant Blazer "oh God oh God let me in let me turn off this goddamn road let me off I CAN'T STOP" that in a shriek at the oncoming traffic as I made a ponderous left turn into the parking lot just as their light turned green and they all came screaming at me as though the world were ending. (It's a short green, I know. But Lord, I couldn't stop.)

Unfortunately as I was chugging across the far end of the parking lot, there was a semi-trailer that had decided it was going to park in those 76 vacant spaces -- all of them-- and was doing leisurely loop-the-loops around the parking lot. He was none too pleased when I shakily screaked into one of his spots, and he spent the next ten minutes industrously backing and filling so that he could park his rear wheels six inches from the front of my hood. I didn't care: I was sitting motionless in the car, engine still on, in neutral, parking brake on, shaking with adrenaline.

Finally I got out and stood in the rain, and seeing that it was during his class break, I called Dave to let him know I had successfully not arrived (as I had promised). The truck driver walked by, giving me the evil eye, as I loudly gibbered "No brakes whatsoever. The brakes are totally gone. I have no brakes at all." This didn't seem to indicate to him that I might have had a good reason for infringing on his personal parking-acre. But, y'know, bygones. I just hope karma bites him someday, the wretch. He was only in the mall about fifteen minutes, and left me grudgingly with my acre of abandoned parking lot with the occasional alarming intrusion of an SUV cruising by at 45 eschewing the clearly-marked lanes for the amiable chaos of simply cutting through unused parking spaces in the apparent hopes of having an accident. Enjoy yourselves, soccer moms, I thought, and remained in my car, not making any sudden moves lest the 100 feet of empty space prove insufficient and they decide that to drive through me would be more expedient. You can never tell with suburbanites, those God-damned savages.

Dad did indeed show up in half an hour. He looked the car over, confirmed that indeed it had no brakes (by now, both brake reservoirs had obligingly emptied themselves to demonstrate their total non-functionality), and pulled his Jeep in front of it. However, when he got out, he left it in neutral, and neglected to put on the parking brake. So the Jeep rolled back, despite my shrieking to alert him, and hit my car's front bumper squarely. Dad got into it to pull it forward, and the trailer hitch had ensnared itself in the plastic cover of the bumper, which I had to lift off to free it. It was, as a result, cracked.

So I got the damn thing off the highway with no brakes and had an accident in the parking lot. I will state for the record that I wasn't even in either of the cars at the time. For whatever that's worth.

Anyhow, Dad had brought his tow bar, and we spent the next hour wrestling with the Voyager's stupid new-fangled bumper, trying to get the chains attached appropriately. In the end we wound up cutting the plastic bumper cover near where it was cracked, with a pocket knife I had impulsively thrown into my backpack against mischance. But the tow bar fit snugly after that, and we did figure-eights in the parking lot until Dad was satisfied it was really attached.

Dad amiably informed me, on the light-hearted (and in my case, light-headed) ride home, that when one is towing, it is a good rule of thumb that the vehicle doing the towing significantly outweigh the one being towed. However, the overarching rule of necessity overcame this; the circa-3000-pound Jeep was making some fascinating mechanical noises as it roar/shrieked along in 4-wheel-low-range with the 3000-pound Voyager behind it. I gripped the door handles with white knuckles, unable to shake the feeling of panic that we were going to hit the person in front of us; it has been several days now and I am still convinced that I cannot stop in time to avoid the person in front of me, even driving Dave's car which can stop in its own length at 65 mph.

Incredibly, we made it home with absolutely no incident whatsoever. The rain eased off, we pulled nonchalantly into the driveway, and Dad looked at me and said, "Don't tell your mother the part about the oncoming traffic. Just say that you couldn't make it any farther on your own."

I admitted that this was a good idea, and so later on over dinner (and DRINKS) when Mom philosophically said that it was good to have such an experience of challenging driving at least once in one's life, Dad and I simply looked at one another over the rims of our glasses and nodded patiently.