Day 13 - Five states in one day!!!

Tuesday, July 18: PA, NY, CT, RI, MA. And we arrived in Mansfield, the last car from our Santa Clara Valley group to arrive, about 2:00pm. And it was hot today, record heat. As we got to Mansfield and turned off on the street to the convention, the first Model A we saw was Jack C. and Don S. sitting at a redlight. They got in on Monday. Quickly went in to register and Pat went to buy the new fashion facts book and was informed that she had just purchased the last copy. Whew!!

This morning, we left Hazleton, PA at 6:30, and drove through the Poconos, great scenery, we came out on I84 and ran that for a while, such a rough road, we hit one bump that actually whipped the gear shift out of high gear. Momentary panic, we thought we had lost the transmission or overdrive when the engine raced. When we crossed the Hudson River, Pat looked over the side and saw a man fishing in a small boat and his yellow lab was sitting there beside him, shades of Norman Rockwell, right beside all that interstate madness. Pat wanted to stop and take a picture but the 18 wheelers sitting on my back bumper (even though I was doing 65) made me think twice about it.

I84 has a bunch of left turning splits, 5 or 6 lanes in one direction, and we need to exit to the left to stay on I84, and we are in the right lane, quite exciting, and drivers here don’t give a hoot that you have your signal on, quite a workout for the A.

We have a gas cap story. When Will L. lost his cap in CO, I started to put my gas cap in my pocket every time we fueled up since I no longer had an extra one. Today it paid off. We stopped for gas in Waterbury, Ct and sure enough, off we went driving down the interstate until Pat began to smell gasoline. She peeked over the windshield and frantically said “no gas cap!” I calmly stopped the car, got out and pulled the cap from my pocket and put it on. And here I was beginning to think that I didn’t really need to put the cap in my pocket. Highest price gas yet was in CT, $3.21 per gallon.

There are a lot of stainless steel diners in this part of the country, right out of the fifties. And some strange street names, Peeptoad Road???? In Terryville, I spied a large bell in a churchyard, just had to go and look at it. It was a Meneely bell, weight was 716 lbs stamped right on it, and it had a very nice ring to it. We called M and she said to bring it home, but it might just be a little heavy, I don’t think we could put wheels on it.

There are 29 SCVC members here, we had dinner tonite with 19 of them at the Picadilly Pub. And met Bob LaBrash from Phoenix who has been on the road in his A for two months, his goal, to drive in every county in the USA, Holy Moley.

Couple pictures, how about the chikin coupe from AZ?