34 thoughts on “Roads To Ruin”

  1. I too love old roads and byways, and going off the beaten track. I make a point of it on a lot of trips in the US. I also enjoy taking dirt roads and trails. On drives from Arizona to the Pacific Northwest and western Canada, it’s rare for me to go on so much as a mile of Interstate.

    As for the ones who don’t like to drive, I actually like them doing that – it means they aren’t crowding up places I like. 🙂

        1. Neither is a Renault Le Car with a loose throttle spring that provides no resistance to the weight of one’s foot on the accelerator pedal. Gradual path to find out they really could do 80mph on 65mph roads.

        2. My 2007 Corolla’s odo now permanently reads 299999. You have to add trip odo A + 100 (time it took me to realize it was stuck) to the odo to get the total mileage these days. I use trip odo B for oil changes.

        3. Mini not suited for long cruises?

          Neither is the Camry (mine is the 97 and subject to the Onion old-car recall campaign).

          There is something about the front seats in those things — they kind of end about mid thigh and leave your knees in mid air. Back in 1982 when these things were the hottest thing since the Pet Rock, I rode “shotgun” out to Milwaukee for the baseball game with a surgeon owner proud to have snagged one of them back in the days when they were pricey for being rationed by import-car controls. I was squirming in the seat of the ’82 as I am in my ’97 I bought from a family member 15 years ago.

          Odd thing is that the Corolla never had that problem — I had an ’86 in the guise of a Chevy Nova, and I had rented one properly badged as a Corolla several years ago.

    2. When I was a kid we’d go on vacation from Rochester NY to Ch’ville, VA via Rt 15, 2 lane road that intersected Rt 29 a bit east of Ch’ville. 2 lanes and stoplights the whole way. Usually we packed up the night before, went to a local dairy next to a GA airport for ice cream and airplane watching and mom would say: Bruce, we’re packed and ready to go, why don’t we go now? So most time it was a night trip and we’d arrive in Ch’ville in a misty dawn.

  3. I had to look up pony truss, I’d never run across it before.
    “Pony truss definition, a through bridge truss having its deck between the top and bottom chords and having no top lateral bracing.”

    I suppose I’ve spent too much time on dirt and two lane roads. The romance has worn off and I just want to get where I’m going. There are too many drivers with no idea how to drive on them anymore, especially passing. Especially mountains.

    1. Thanks for the definition. I’ve gone my entire life until now thinking that a pony truss was something that a small horse wore if he had a hernia.

  4. I’m sorry but hailing from that part of the country I had my share of one lane Pratt truss bridges and even a paved one lane TWO WAY road. Yeah that’s right. In order to pass, opposing traffic naturally went to half off the road each way. To use the bridge it was first come first served. If both parties arrived at the bridge at the same time it was a bit of acting out the definition of passive aggression. It often entailed the use of reverse. Fortunately it was in the middle of two extremely sharp right angle turns which forced speeds down to 10 mph or I’m sure there would have been fatalities there every year. As a kid I don’t remember there being a single one. All gone now. Replaced by a two lane road and the bridge itself is the curve. The iron and steel one lane Pratt bridge part of the 30’s NRA/CCC all gone now. The Dixie Highway was 10 miles to the East. A part of Illinois Route 1. Taking my son for a visit to IU when we were college shopping, about four years ago, the trip from Indianapolis to Bloomington involved the forced transit across parts of this scenic byway. All nice if you are into that kind of thing but a real PITA when you’re just trying to get from A -> B. Finish I-69. And add some twisty roads along the Wabash if you want a taste if the old Indiana.

    2. When visited New Zealand last year, the hardest part of driving wasn’t being on the left, but learning to deal with all the one lane bridges. Even on major highways, and some of them were several hundred meters long with passing bays along the way. Every one was signed as to who had to “give way.” Follow the procedures, and there’s no problem. Well, the only problems seemed to come from rented campervans who didn’t seem to understand the system, and insisted you back up even when you had the right of way and entered first.

      As for driving on “backroads” vs. Interstate– depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Sometimes a back road can function as a faster bypass, and sometimes the Interstate or major highway is the only way to get to an out-of-the-way location. (And the “I only drive backroads” types seem to be the same people who don’t understand using the turnouts to let faster traffic pass, and quickly speed up in passing zones.)

      1. Your comment of “passing bays” reminded me of the procedure on the one way “slab” of pulling off to half the road to also let by faster traffic from behind, rather than have them tailgate you for 5 miles. Naturally this road had well maintained shoulders for obvious reasons.

      2. Some of those one-lane NZ bridges also have the added joy of carrying railroad tracks. When a train arrives, it can get interesting on those bridges. And yup, when I saw it get interesting, it was rented campervans that were fumbling around and almost got crunched. I also saw one wheels-up at the bottom of a cliff in the South Island.

        100% agreed on using turnouts to let traffic pass. Failure to do so results in a lot of deaths, plus of course irritation. This is an issue on interstates too, you get the clowns who cause “rolling roadblocks” via driving at the same speed in the fast lane as traffic in the slow lane.

        1. “you get the clowns who cause “rolling roadblocks” via driving at the same speed in the fast lane as traffic in the slow lane.”

          You call them “clowns”, but I call them the hard working men and women who deliver the goods we need to live in their 18-wheel semi rigs!

          1. I didn’t mean the truckers!
            I meant the ones in cars in the fast lane who match the speed of the vehicles in the slow lane.

          2. Don’t mind them so much. Gets a bit annoying though when some optimist thinks he’s going to pass another big rig on an uphill. Please…

  5. I too like the occasional old highway and puzzling out where roads used to go, but I have to say I now miss interstate highways. Out on the end of Long Island, it is a few hours for me, either by ferry or through the sphincter of NYC (take that any way you want) to get to the open road. Yes, the Long Island Expressway does carry the designation I-495, but nobody thinks of it that way. Spent decades in the Midwest and West and remember fondly driving down the interstates, slightly over the speed limit, and the only other vehicle in sight was an eighteen-wheeler about a mile ahead.

    1. Usually I commute from Lawton, OK to OKC. 86 miles one way. the heck of it is there’re no traffic problems generally until I get to Newcastle (south side suburb of OKC) So it takes me about 45 minutes to drive 60-ish miles, 45 minutes for the last 26. Same in reverse going home. I blame the Newcastle casinos.

  6. I do like a dose of two-lane blacktop to break up a long day’s driving. You get a chance to see what the country actually looks like, sometimes even spot something interesting and stop just because. Can’t much do either of those on the interstates.

    But, around the time the sun’s getting low, I long ago figured out to make sure to be back on the interstate. Unfamiliar two-lane blacktop at night can be white-knuckle terror time, depending. You can see little or nothing beyond your headlights anyway, and you have no idea what hairpin curves or stopped trucks await over every little rise. A sparsely-traveled well-marked road in level country on a moonlit clear night, not so bad. Add some mix of heavy traffic, bad weather, and winding road, not so much…

    My all-time worst two-lane night-drive moment was the first time I took 18 east from Victorville. Somewhere along there, there’s a medium-steep little hill that combines a much steeper downslope on the far side with a sharp right jog just past the crest. So you go over the top too fast (to keep from being rear-ended by the locals who know the road) and just as the road’s dropping out from under you and you have limited grip, you find yourself aimed directly at the glaring headlights of oncoming traffic coming up the hill, and you have a split second with the road dropping out from under you to figure out precisely how much you need to turn right NOW to avoid either having an apocalyptic head-on or going off the shoulder and tumbling down the hillside.

    Second scariest – less intense but more prolonged – was heading up 395 toward Mojave in a howling thunderstorm – one of the first times I was taking that route, a long time ago, and they’d just resurfaced the road and hadn’t painted new edge lines on it yet – so I was threading the needle between an endless line of oncoming semis blinding me with wet pitted old windshield glare on my left, and a no-shoulder road edge I couldn’t see on my right. With half-lane wind gusts mixed in. Pulled into Kramer Junction surprised I hadn’t left dents in the steering wheel plastic.

    1. Reminds me of the time I managed to smoke the brakes and then eventually caused burst transmission seals about 6 months later using compression breaking in a Chevy Tahoe Blazer coming off Monitor Pass in CA. Because of the spot welded uni-body of those light truck Chevy chassis of the late 80’s and mid 90’s it was impossible to remove the transmission to replace the seals without cutting it out. Essentially the vehicle replacement light came on and that was the end of that. What goes up must come down.

    2. Yep, nothing like tootling along on a foggy morning and cresting a hill right behind an escaped horse… All ended well, though.

  7. Too much social media, not enough actual socializing. And cars that are pretty much impossible to tinker with with common hand tools except in the most superficial way.

    As a recovering master gunner on two different flavors of tank (M60A3/M1A1/2) I could get downright dirty with turrets and associated fire control. I take my Accord to Firestone.

    1. Oh yeah, ordered an ’85 Camaro Berlinetta (loaded) at the Bamberg PX and picked it up in Newark on my way to an MG instructor assignment at Ft Knox. Used to love taking it out on the weekends to see what I could see of backroad Kentucky (Goat bar-b-q sammiches for the win in Paducah). Turned out one day I was tooling along I65 coming back from Bowling Green when an earthquake struck. Didn’t know about it until I saw the news that evening. Just thought the highway was f’d. (It was, btw). They may still be pouring money into the I-265 loop around L’ville, 35 yrs later…

      1. Don’t remember the call letters but a DJ name of Ron Clay (since deceased) out of L’ville did some serious trolling on Easter ’95. I had retired shortly before and was employed at the SDF long term parking. On the way home around 7-ish in the morning he reported that a UPS 747 had made an emergency landing on I-265. I saw emergency vehicles, peeps stopped on the side of the road, and was trying to figure out how you’d put a 747 down without wholesale streetlight harvesting. Turns out, yeah, you bastardi! Spaghetti tree this!

  8. My wife took care of the 20 year old car problem back in February. Totaled our 2000 Honda Accord. I really liked that car. It had little body roll, went where you pointed it and accelerated and stopped well. Also most comfortable car seat I’ve ever sat in.

    New Zealand used to have lots of German tourists who rented campervans. Known for having head on collisions with New Zealanders. Last car we rented had large red and white sticker on dash, pointing left. Not a problem for us Aussies as we drive on the left also.

    Multilane highways are now a problem in Australia. Draconian enforcement of speed limits (as low as 3 kilometers per hour over will get you a fine) means everyone drives along in formation.

    Nowadays we take the homebuilt BD-4 airplane for trips more than a couple of hundred kilometers and lots of times for shorter trips.

    1. When I was in high school mumblety-mumble years ago I thought about going to aviation mechanic school and building myself a BD-4 as a sort of graduation gift. Instead I went to university and have not owned a plane yet. How do you like your BD-4?

      1. We’ve had the BD-4 for 24 years. Great little airplane. Fast enough, carries lots of fuel and simple to maintain. Not the best at any one thing but great overall.
        The design is now 52 years old and you can still buy a kit for BD-4C. Says something about it. https://jimbede.com/
        Put a 180 HP Lycoming and constant speed prop on it. We have 150 HP and fixed pitch. The CS prop will give you better takeoff and you’ll cruise at 150 KTAS with 180 HP.

    1. Glad to hear she wasn’t hurt. Problem with old old cars, the cost to repair exceeds the $ value of the car, i.e. totaled at 5kph. Unless you are doing all the work yourself and have easy access to junk yard parts.

      1. Well the other car was doing about 60kph. Hit just in front of the front wheels and moved the whole front sideways a few inches. Not easy to fix.
        Bought a new top of the line Mazda CX-5. It is white. Attention needs to be paid in parking lots as these cars are very popular in Australia (let alone all the other SUVs that look similar) and it is easy to try to get in the wrong one.

Comments are closed.