Large Metal Objects
Throughout New Jersey there is an abundance of major highways traveling all across this beautiful state (except for the northwest corner, which is expected to get along with Route 206 and basically nothing else). I would say I’ve driven on most of them at one point or another. In general the most aggressive opinion I have about a stretch of road is that it’s “too boring” or “too congested”. Otherwise I don’t much care about the highways; I’m glad they exist to get me where I need to go, but one is very much like the others.
Two highways are the exception to that rule. The first is the Garden State Parkway. The main reason I have a strong opinion about the Parkway is that I was in a major accident on that road. A tale for another day, but based mainly on that fact I think the Parkway is more dangerous than people assume. For large portions of the 172 miles that run from Cape May all the way up to the New York state line no trucks are allowed. Even where trucks are allowed I believe there is a weight limit, so you basically never find yourself on the Parkway fighting for your life against eighteen wheelers. You just have to deal with the demented, maniacal speed demons who think they can drive as fast as they please because…it’s safer! There are no trucks!
These are the people who increase my urge to make citizen’s arrests.
They obviously do not understand the basic laws of physics if they think they can drive that fast and swerve between cars and not eventually pay for it. Despite these lunatics and my own PTSD, I have managed to find peace with the Garden State Parkway. As much as it can freak me out sometimes, I like all the places it can take me, i.e. the shore. And I do enjoy that I do not have to do battle with trucks while on this road. GSP: 7/10 stars, pretty views, excellent destinations, but more dangerous than it looks.
The second highway I have an opinion on is the New Jersey Turnpike and my opinion is that it almost entirely sucks. The Turnpike runs from the Delaware Memorial Bridge in the south across the state like a seatbelt shoulder strap, ending near the George Washington Bridge. There are various extensions that are technically also part of the Turnpike, but I am speaking of the 117 mile stretch of road between the bridges. In that entire length there are fewer than 20 exits which means you are often driving for miles at a time with no opportunity for escape. It can feel like a trap at times.
From the south the first forty or so miles are only two lanes each way, so when you inevitably end up trapped behind someone who doesn’t know what the left lane is for, it is aggravating to say the least. One also must contend with trucks of all shapes and sizes on the narrower stretches of the Turnpike. Even when you get to the part where the roadway splits into “Cars Only” and “Cars, Trucks, and Buses” lanes, there is no guarantee that there won’t be a large metal object barreling down on you as sometimes trucks mysteriously make it onto the “Cars Only” side. And just like on the Parkway, there are speed demons and slowpokes, neither of whom seem to understand basic common sense driving. In short, the Turnpike should receive a very low score of about 3/10: epically boring, leaves one feeling trapped, but gets a few points for being the fastest way to get to several important places.
In reality, there is a stretch of the Turnpike that I absolutely love to drive on. I love it so much so that on my way home from work I often drive a good five miles out of my way to stay on the Turnpike rather than taking the Parkway all the way to my exit. This stretch that I so adore is between exits 11 (Woodbridge) and 14 (Newark, Bayonne, Jersey City, etc.). This is not exactly a traditional scenic route, but the two main reasons I love that part of the road are both because of what I see when I drive.
First, driving that stretch of the Turnpike reminds me of the opening credits of The Sopranos. Driving past the “Drive Safely” oil storage tanks fills my heart with joy as I remember Tony Soprano passing the very same landmark. I actually miss the pre-EZ Pass days when you’d have to roll down your window and take a ticket at the toll booths just because you see Tony do that exact thing in the opening. You can safely bet your ass that if I smoked cigars I would be lighting up every time I got on the Turnpike singing “woke up this morning, got yourself a gun” and day dreaming about my favorite anti-hero in a way that is not gross, but is also probably not healthy.
(My obsessions over various television shows and characters are also a tale for another time.)
Second reason is at exit 14 you are at Newark Airport. As you drive from exit 11 up to 14 (the route I most commonly take), you get a front row seat to the planes taking off and landing at Newark. Depending on the winds and weather, the planes either line up and come in from the south, where they make their descent directly over the lanes of the Turnpike, or from the north, where the final approach is over the toll booth where you can get onto route 78. Sometimes they even make a sneak landing from the east where they come in cutting a perpendicular line across the lanes of traffic, which can be quite the surprise.
Whichever way they come from, I find it ridiculously exciting when the timing lines up perfectly and a plane flies right over my car. I love hearing the roar of the engines and feeling the slight rumble of a nearby powerful machine. When I look up just as a plane passes over I get such a thrill. (It’s a good thing my car doesn’t have a sunroof or I would almost certainly have that thing open and drive off the road from looking up instead of forward.)
The thrill I get doesn’t come from thinking planes are cool or even from knowing anything about airplanes. I am thrilled each time I see a plane land because my brain cannot comprehend how it is that such a large, heavy, metal object full of humans and all their stuff could ever possibly stay aloft in the sky. It simply does not compute.
I know there are concepts involved like drag, lift, and thrust. I know those words mean something significant to the science of flight, but to me they just sound like instructions for disappearing a body. I’ve had the science explained to me more than once, but I truly believe that my brain is not built to understand this concept. I just know the planes fly and other people know how that works and I’m choosing to trust them with that job.
That being said, I am pretty scared of flying. I’ve done it many times before, but not since the pandemic. Time away from those behemoth instruments of travel has not made my heart grow fonder. I now am more inclined to think of them as behemoth instant death tubes equipped with tray tables. This is a thing I’m slowly working on with my therapist as I have no desire to stay grounded for the rest of my life. Thus far we’ve determined that this new fear of flying probably stems from my aforementioned car accident, in which I was violently rear-ended, my car totaled.
While I walked away from that accident with a tiny cut above my eye, some gorgeous bruises, and damaged but not broken ribs, the complete lack of control I had in that situation did not escape my notice. The accident was a shock and suddenly everything about that day, the weeks that followed, my finances (to name a few) was completely different. That car came out of nowhere and blew up everything. Most significantly it called my attention to my own mortality. The world suddenly seemed like nothing but a huge obstacle course of large metal objects conspiring to kill me at any time. Even though the actual trauma event had been a car accident, the logic translated easily to airplanes. The more time that has passed, the more scared I’ve become. Fear of flying: 0/10, do not recommend.
Eventually I will get back in the air, it’s just going to take some time and possibly some Ativan. For the time being I content myself with driving underneath the airplanes, completely amazed and pretending to be Tony Soprano.
