There were 4 of us, total. Jarrod, Paul (he lived on my hall, and graduated last year in applied math), Dave (he lives on my hall, and was indicted by the FBI), and me. We left Thursday night, and got back Tuesday morning. What a long strange trip it's been.
We started out from MIT at about 6:30-7:00 to go get Jarrod at BC. We had rigged a boombox to plug into the cigarette lighter so that we would have tapes while we were driving. Unfortuneately, the lighter was broken (or so we thought). Now, the lighter was just one of the many things wrong with the car. (It was Paul's car, BTW) First, the left turn signal wouldn't work, because the front bulb was burnt out, and it wouldn't oscillate without that bulb to complete the circuit. Then, there were no dash lights, so you couldn't see the fuel, or the speed without a flashlight (which we fortuneately had). The dome light, and all other interior lights wouldn't work either, except for the map light.
Anyway, since the cigarette lighter didn't work, we needed batteries. Dave knew he could get some from Tech Square, so we went there. While Paul and I were waiting on Dave, I thought about the fuses. "You know Paul, we might have a burned out fuse, and that may be why the lighter doesn't work." So we checked. Lo and behold, not only was a fuse burned out, but 2 were completely missing. Aha! We decided to stop at an auto parts store.
Sure enough, when we replaced the fuse, the lighter, glove box light, trunk light, and the dome light started working. Unfortuneately, still no dash lights. We continued on our way to get Jarrod. We should have realized from what happened that our trip down would be cursed. We took a wrong turn off of Comm Av., so it took us about 1.5 hours to make a 10 minute trip to BC. On the way there, we heard this banging noise from the trunk, so when we stopped, we checked it out, and decided it was the little 8-can cooler that we brought. We secured it more firmly, and started on the trip.
From BC, we took another wrong turn, and headed onto Comm Ave, instead of going the other way and getting right onto 90 (the road we ended up on from Comm Av.) But this was minor compared to what would befall us later in the trip.
As we drove, we heard that knocking sound again, and decided that it must be the 2-liter bottles of soda in the other cooler. So, at the next stop, we wedged a blanket in with them. This solved the problem for a while. But, in about an hour, we heard the sound again. We're about 3 hours out of Boston at this point. When we stopped at McDonald's for food, we meant to check, but forgot. When we pulled out of the driveway, we heard the sound, but decided to live with it.
Then, in Jersey, we started hearing this screeching sound. I rolled down the window to see if the sound was coming from outside or inside the car, because it sounded like the same place the knocking was coming from. At that point, we all smelled rubber burning. Hmm, where could that rubber be from...maybe...our tires?? So, we took an exit, and got off the road in East Orange. We parked in some parking lot behind what we learned was the Kessler Institute.
Paul and Dave went to find a pay phone and call AAA. Jarrod and I stayed with the car. We were looking at that area of the car, and realized that the shock was not at all affixed to the car at the top. It was moving freely, only held at the bottom, and every once in a while, it would scrape the tire, making the screech, and burning the rubber. What fun!
Dave and Paul first went to the Kesseler Institute for a phone. The guard was a complete wuss, and tried to talk to them through a double set of doors before he finally gave up and went into the area between them and bravely spoke through only one set of doors. They weren't getting in there. But, they found a pay phone and called. The conversation went like this (keep in mind this is a national 1-800 number):
So, we were waiting by the car, when a piggie shows up. Surprisingly, this was the best experience I have had with a pig (not like later in the trip.) He rolled down the window, Paul said we had called AAA and were waiting, and the cop left. He didn't say a word. Just in and out. Unreal. So we wait a little longer, and the cop comes back. Apparently, the security guard had bitched about him spending so little time with us the first time. The guard also said that "four black youths were hanging out in the parking lot," meaning us. The cop was pissed about this, "If he had gotten his lazy scared ass out here, he'd have seen that you all are white. Fucking rent-a-cops." And with that he left us.
Finally, the AAA guy got there. He basically said there was nothing he could do for us at this time of night (2am), but he said that if we could tie back the shock, and keep it from scraping, we might be able to make it to the 24hour service areas on the Jersey Turnpike. Nobody had any rope, or wire, but fortuneatly, we had a roll of duct tape. That's right, we literally duct taped the shock to the car.
We limped for a little ways on that, but eventually the tape broke. We stopped at a McDonalds, and walked through the drive through. Oddly, when we asked for rope or cord of some kind, the woman actually gave us some strapping (the kind that palettes are held together with). That stuff is strong, so we used it to lash the shock back.
We limped on that until we finally got to just outside of DC. We ended up stopping to find a sunoco (where paul's warrenty was still valid). We found one, but the service guy wouldn't be there for an hour. We decided to wait, and Dave called his folks (they live in Maryland, right near DC). We thought we might be able to get his car, but no go on that. While we were hanging around the Sunoco, we noticed that the counter had a little porcelin urinal with the words "Yankee Drinking Fountain" on it. Ahh...we felt so welcome.
When the guy, finally got there, he informed us that he wouldn't be able to squeeze us in until Monday. Things were looking bleak for the trip at that point. But, we decided to push on to Dave's house, and then see if we could find something to do around there. It sucked.
On the way there, we found another Sunoco! It was so cool. We pull in, and Bob (a friendly mechanic) is there just waiting to fix our car. "About an hour," he says! That's exactly the length of time we decided would be the latest we could leave, and still have it be worth it. We were very psyched.
The next problem happened when I was driving. I-495 is an outerbelt around DC, like 270 is around cols. We were supposed to be on it for a little bit, and then get off on 85 south. Ooops. Did I accidentally drive the whole loop while everybody slept? Yes I did. There's an hour gone.
After that things went pretty smoothly, until we got to Atlanta. There we met the fine Georgia Highway Patrol. Apparently, we had absolutely no taillights at all. So, they pulled us over. Dave was driving, here's a snippet of their conversation:
We finally got to our hotel in Hattiesburg, Mississipi (about 2 hours from New Orleans) at about 6am on Sat. That's about 8 hours later than we wanted to get there. The trip down took a total of 38 hours, the trip back, about 30. Straight driving would probably do it in about 26-27 hours. Next year, we're flying.