Traveling for ID Tech Camps
A short work of Non-Fiction
by Krister Rollins

Chapter 1: Training in Philidelphia

The day for training is fast approaching and I keep neglecting to look up the various ways of travel. Out of some silly romantic notion in my head, I think it might be cool to ride the train down. I’ve never really ridden a train in this country and would like to give the ol’ rail a whirl, if only for a bit.
$200 round-trip tickets quickly discouraged that.
My aunt found $29 flights. Really cheap. The grand total came to $76.90. Less the $75 travel stipend leaves me owing a whopping $1.90. Sounds reasonable to me, right?
Wrong.
Firstly, the airport I have to get to is 100 miles away or so. Manchester, New Hampshire. It’s a two hour and forty minute drive according to mapquest. The flight is scheduled for 10 AM, so I should be there at 8 AM, what with all the new security regulations. So I need to leave my house at 5 AM, roughly. And I do, I give in to my worries and leave exceedingly early, encounter no traffic and arrive at the airport at 7:30 AM. I check my car into short term parking, I’ll only be gone for 36 hours.
So, I get into the airport and don’t have any problems with security. It’s too early for my flight to even be on the boards in this rotten place. Good thing I brought a book. For Whom The Bell Tolls. Good stuff, it really is, but you can only take so much Hemingway in one sitting, it begins to screw with the way you think. Here’s my log of the events up through boarding:

11:00 AM
I have been up since 4:30 AM after sleeping for little more than three hours, all told. My throat burns from bile and poor nutrition and my eyes are thick but I can’t sleep.
I’ve been in this airport since 8 AM and now have little tolerance for stuffy lobbies and chairs with no headrests.
I’ve been reading Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls for most of two hours and I think his masculine, utilitarian and dense prose is getting to me. It’s taken me a while to warm up to his style, but I’m quite enamored of it now.
Perhaps I’ll sit next to the cute Redhead and flirt. Only time may tell. I don’t know how charming I could be with a head full of Hemingway and a stomach full of acid, little sleep and little patience. But only time may tell.
Damn. She seems to be with her family. Not married, but I still could try to steal her away in front of her mother? Grandmother?

The pleasant, equally-upset attendant informed us, just now, the plane is sick.

11:30 AM
I can’t get the kink out of my back. No amount of twisting, wiggling and stretching relieves the pressure. I keep fidgeting. I open my bag, take out the book, close the bag. Find my spot. I can’t read right now. I open the bag, put the book in, shut it. Lean against the phone booth in front of me. Stretch. Open they bag. Take out the pencil and pad, scratch down fatigue-fed whiny rants. Put it back in the bag. Try to get comfortable. This damn air vent/ledge is not compatable with my ass.
Christ, my legs are hot. Maybe I should’ve brought something other than jeans. I hope I have enough money for the trip. I left my checkbook in the car. Not that many people accept out of state starter checks.

My iPod died. It started playing in my bag. The battery’s been fading for a while.
I’ve got Nick Cave stuck in my head and no way to release him.
Shit.

11:40 AM
A kid is sobbing. I can relate.
We get a new plane. It arrives in 20 minutes. So, after the current passengers get shipped off, we get to go to Philadelphia.
So, it seems we’ll be getting there promptly on Monday. [the events take place on a friday - ed.]
And judging from my airport luck, I will get mugged.
Although, the drive to the ‘port went well. No snags. Quicker than mapquest suggested. But it was awfully early.
Redhead and I keep exchaning glances. Good sign?
Although she may yet be married/taken. Rings all over her fingers. Don’t know how I missed them before.
Whatever.
Although she acts younger than I think married people should be.

In between this entry and the next one is one full day, to be recounted below:

6/4/2005 ~9:30 PM
Boarding the flight looked hopeful. Redhead took efforts to stand next to me in line. She was short and cute and smelled pleasant. Unfortunately, she was behind me and her whole clan sat in one place and I lost her. I scampered down the aisle looking for an

empty spot for us, forgetting about her family.
Getting to Villanova was no trouble. I had a very helpful train attendant and checked in and got my room with no problems at all.
Except the pouring rain. I had to walk across campus to check in, then walk across again to get to the dorms. The first walk wasn’t so bad. The second made me wish we descended from salamanders. And then they moved check-in to the dorms, so it was a quick jog through the rain that would leave no one but poor old Krister soaked. Pfah.
Then I napped, found out my suitemate was the president of the company, Pete. I wasn’t 100% positive at first because I’d just met him 15 minutes before. But I was pretty sure. Then I read some more Hemingway.
Hung out with Meg. At at the Pie-in-the-Sky Pizzaria. Got a beer. Got a hot chocolate. Went back to the room, watched Space Ghosts (Whoa you kids, calm down!). Got in bed and turned out the light. And then the door was opening and it was Pete and his roommate, Mike. They opened the door to my room without realizing I was in there and then apologized profusely.
It was fine.
Training was fine, too. Hung out with Ben and Brendan and Meg. Met a future co-worker. Saw a lot of cute girls. Maybe I’ll work with one. That’d be swell.
Missed the traing I should’ve taken to the airport. That sucked. I called and found out the flight had been postponed all of 12 minutes. The next train was an hour away. By my math that train would give me about forty minutes at the airport. More like thirty.
I boarded, a little nervous, but hopeful just the same. I, however, forgot to account for changing stations and waiting for the next train.
The late next train.
On time, the train was scheduled to arrive at the station at 8:34 PM. Precisely the time

I wanted to be arriving at the airport for my flight at 9:05 PM. Still, I figured it couldn’t be more than a 20 minute ride.
Then, I saw it was late. At one point it was up to 12 minutes late. But in the end it came down to about seven.
So. I’m nervous as all get-the-fuck-up, sitting on an uncomfortable bench, eyes glued to the time board, willing the train to hurry up and the plane to slow down. Several people sit next to me, a chick, some really cute black kids. The littlest is adorable and next to me. That helps with the nervousness. They get up and a lovely girl asks if I, too, am airport bound. I confess I am and then unload my tale upon her. She’s sympathetic and hopeful. We chat a bit about why we’re in Philadelphia (job stuff, both of us) and the train comes and we board.
Hang on, landing.
All right.
I find out, by way of direct asking, her job is the director’s assistant on a Disney Movie with Mark Wahlberg called Invincible.
Cool!
I tell her I’m studying film and she gives me contact information and the name of a guy who will probably hire me the instant I graduate.
Cool!
So, I get to the airport at 9:05PM. Scheduled departure time for my flight. The ticket lady looks at me like I’m from Mars and says I probably won’t make it but she’ll call the gate and see.
This is it, do I spend the night in this godforsaken shithole of a city or do I get on my flight and relax and drive home in comfort.
Luckily, there was that 12 minute delay. I hop on the plane and head for home. A free

man. It’s been a good trip.
And that’s where I thought that my woes had ended. I had thought that as soon as I got home I’d get my car and drive and all would be well in the universe. Unfortunately, someone out there hates me. Despises me, in fact. Because the entire trip I’d been trying to keep spending low-ish because I knew I’d need the money. The parking garage I parked at charged 15 dollars a day, I figured I’d be gone for 36 hours, wouldn’t be too much of a big deal, I’d still be able to buy dinner en route home. But they charged me for two full days. Which wiped my wallet clean. I had no money.
And I had toll roads ahead of me.
My grandmother doesn’t live too far from Manchester, NH. I can get from there home without hitting toll roads. Maybe if I can make it there...
The atlas doesn’t help. I can’t remember what routes I take or any of that crap. I pull into a convenience store, haven of route knowledge in New England, and politely enquire for a way to some route that will ferry me home. But no one can help me. This is not supposed to happen. This is supposed to be the one place you can reliably go for directions, and no one knows how to get anywhere. How do they get home at night?
So, I get in my car and sit and stare at my atlas in the parking lot, hoping a route will appear before me. Then I hear some saintly women asking, “Where are you trying to go?” I say, “Maine, near Portland, but I can’t take any toll roads, I’m broke.”
“Sure, I can get you there. I go to the coast all the time.”
Thank God.
She starts explaining a route to me, then asks if I want to go the direct route or not.
“As direct as possible, under the circumstances.”
“How much money do you have?”
“None. Flat out none.”

“Well, then you probably want to start down...you know what? I’ll just give you the toll money.”
I could’ve kissed her. I probably should’ve offered to. They give me nearly enough for my tolls and I manage to dig the rest out of my car.
So, it’s been a long, difficult trip. All the people I met were very nice, even the ones who couldn’t help me, and I’ve now got this amusing story to tell.
Now for the tearjerker.

Chapter 2: Working in Virginia

Now, I live in Maine but signed up for the University of Virginia as my primary teaching location because I have friends down here, and when I got the job I had a girlfriend. She’s now, unfortunately, just a friend. I figured between her and my two other friends I could crash at one end of the state or another each weekend. But then she broke up with me and I signed up for weekend housing.
I decide to drive down on the 10th, camp starts the 11th and I can stay with a friend in Reston (Near D.C.) the night before, drive down in the morning, all will be cool, hip and groovy. I’ll be driving in nine states this trip. Nine long, boring states.
I had a loverly time the night before flirting with a german chick named Janina at some redneck bars in Maine and also hanging out with an old friend and an Irish chick and some Polish chick, too. They work with my friend, and he wanted to “introduce” the girls to America. And by that I mean he wanted to hook up with the Irish one. In a bad way. So I played wingman and had a good time. Hooray!
I get a decent amount of sleep, mom makes breakfast and I shower and head out. I had packed the night before, a rarity for me, and so could pretty much just take off at my leisure. I

figured leaving at 10 AM would give me plenty of time to arrive in Reston by 8 PM. The mapquest directions said about 9 hours, so I wasn’t being too outrageous. And the drive goes pretty well over all. I sing along with my music, cruise with the window down. There’s a traffic jam on fresh tar. Yuck. It is never hotter than when you are driving in a traffic jam on fresh tar. You get the tar fumes, the car fumes and the heat baking off the sun. I also got a driver’s sunburn on my jauntily cocked window arm.
And then my car breaks down. First I noticed the high pitched squeaking off the concrete walls of the intra-city highway. Then my temperature gauge climbed way to quickly to the top. A few small puffs of smoke escaped before I’d pulled over.
I turn off the car and sit in my car for a minute or two. Shit, it’s after five o’clock. It’s friday. No mechanic is going to be open. Well, maybe it’s just a coolant leak. I dig out my water and pop the hood.
There’s more than enough coolant. In fact, it looks like it’s been backed up.
The water pump is dead.
Well, it’s just the water pump. Should be a pretty quick surgery. I’m still hopeful. I call AAA. But their roadside emergency assistance number doesn’t click through. And then I realize that I have absolutely no freaking clue where I am. I think I’m still in Connecticut, but there’s a sign for Greenwhich Ave. Isn’t Greenwhich Village in New York? I call 411 and get many numbers, all of which, for some weird reason, lead back to the same surly guy who “doesn’t do highways.” I sit in my car and wait. Then I notice it.
An accident up ahead.
Oh joy of joys! There’s a cop or two up there. I run up and flag one down and he comes over and calls for a tow guy and I happily walk back to my car. The tow truck comes up half an hour or so later and he’s a sketchy guy instantly. But he’s friendly enough and he’s towing my car. He asks where it’s going.

“Any chance of a mechanic beging open?”
He laughs at me.
He takes me to the towing company lot, drops me off at a sleazy, not terribly cheap motel and tells me to call a mechanic in the morning. He gives me the number of one who should be able to do it.
Man, what a crappy motel. The cable didn’t even come in well. It’s coming down a cable! How does it have bad reception! The shower didn’t even come with shampoo. I had to buy a little packet because I left most of my crap in the locked lot of the towing company.
I wander into a crappy part of town and by sub-par chinese food (who has heard of sesame chicken with no sesames on it?) and a bottle of coke and go back to my room and watch the free HBO. I can’t sleep very well, though, because it’s suck a sleazy place in a rat-shit neighborhood, I’m sure some punk-ass robber is gonna bust into my room. The clerk will have tipped him off to a “rich college boy” (HA!) in room 278 and he’ll come in and take my remaining few dollars and leave me with a bulletwound and a story.
But no, I wake up in the morning, still possesing money and a pulse and make some phone calls.
It turns out the water pump in a Subaru Legacy Station Wagon from 1995 is in the exact center of the fucking engine. It’s a four hour job if it’s a minute. And every place is booked solid. Finally I get ahold of a dealership and they agree to at least look at it. I call AAA after Dad gets them to call me and arrange for a truck to pick me up from the lot where my car is and drop it off at the dealership. Then I walk to the lot and try to get my car out.
They only accept cash. That’s weird, I think. And it was $121 dollars. It seemed awfully expensive but the guy who picked up my car said it wasn’t too bad for them. He also said they are “notorious for not releasing vehicles.” That explains why they were all so pissed at me for not calling them before calling another towing company. They wanted me to stay there

and go to one of their crooked buddy mechanics.
So the car arrives at the dealership and the foreman tells me it’ll be about an hour before they know for certain that my car won’t be ready by the end of the day. In the mean time I go to a closer hotel that looks ten millions times better than my previous night’s lodgings for a scant four dollars more and order a reuben at a diner that I can’t eat when it arrives. Not that it is particularly unappetizing, although it’s certainly not appetizing, I just am all of the sudden not hungry.
The mechanic says there is no way in hell the car will be ready before Tuesday. Which sucks because work called and they want me coming in the next day, Sunday. I’m already missing the first day of work and really need to be there for Sunday at the least. I buy bus tickets over the phone and the mechanic, who has been nothing but helpful, drives me to the station.
I’m going to right a letter commending their work.
He also told me he wouldn’t charge for storage and he called in an extra mechanic specifically to look at my car. So if you’re ever in Stamford, CT and need a car fixed, Brett at the Subaru dealership on 128 Baxter is your man.
Unfortunately, the dealership closed at two in the afternoon and the bus wasn’t scheduled to leave until 7. So I had to kill about five hours at the happiest place on earth, the bus station.
I was thrilled.
And then the bus was an hour late. Which sucks. My next layover, in New York City, only had fifty minutes of scheduled time. But it turned out to not be a problem because that bus was an hour and a half late.
So I missed my bus from D.C. to Richmond. And Richmond was going to take me to Charlottesville. And the next bus didn’t leave D.C. for Richmond for another seven hours.
This is intolerable.

I call my friend Ben. He’s an iD staffer as well, this year at Georgetown, last year at U.Va. I was to be staying at his house the night before. By some strange miracle he has just woken up from sleeping from the day before when he pulled an all nighter. It’s 2:30 in the morning and he agrees to come and get me and drive me to Charlottesville. He takes an hour in getting there, but that was absolutely fine. I had my first meal of the day, four pieces of fried chicken, two biscuits and one soda for a ludicrous ten dollars and change. But it was delightful.
He shows up and we’re off. En route to Charlottesville we came across a lot of wildlife. Lots of birds, a couple of cats, a dog we named Baxter and a bear we named Uncle Steve.
We both agreed that Uncle Steve could kick Baxter’s ass.
I arrive at 7 AM and Tracy gives me my keys, an early morning smile and pointed me towards my bed. Where I slept for four hours and the week began in earnest.
It was a good week. I’m having a lot of fun here.
Unfortunately, in my haste in packing the bear necessities at the car dealership I forgot such creature comforts as a comforter, a pillow, nail clippers and an alarm clock. You’re never really miserable until you have a bed you need to be fully dressed to be comfortable in and your pillow is yesterday’s shorts.
During the week I called the dealership a couple of times. Turns out the water pump wasn’t the only bad part to my car. The mechanics, in fact, are shocked I made it as far as I did. They predicted massive engine failure within a mile if I hadn’t come in. Some pulleys were extraordinarily warped and I guess they were about to release, effectively totaling my car. So they fixed that and the water pump thing.
And now I’m $970.15 in the hole. Which is coupled with the $121 towing fee, the $85 dollar room and the $130 round trip bus tickets. For a grand total of $1306.15. Not that that is what this is about, it’s just another factor. My grandmother has, quite generously, offered me $1000 dollars. Which is wonderful. Family has helped out in large amounts on this trip, from

answering my phone calls to talking to money.
So, I leave at the end of my first week of camp to catch the bus and ride back up to Stamford to get my automobile. The buses, remarkably, run fine and I arrive ahead of schedule. Which is good, because I have no way other than walking of getting to the dealership. I remember the address, luckily, and the ride down seemed short and fresh in my head.
I guess it wasn’t though. Because I got lost and wandered around Stamford, Connecticut for two hours and fifteen minutes to arrive at the dealership just as it opened at nine in the morning. My feet were sore and I’d developed a blister, I’d find out that evening.
So, I start driving and call my friend, that ex who lives in Va. and tell her I might be able to visit for the afternoon. I’m really looking forward to it because she’s still among my favorite people and I haven’t seen her since school.
Of course I take a wrong turn. I effectively made no progress for an hour and a half of driving. That put me in her neighborhood fifteen minutes before she had to start work. So we hung out in the parking lot of the Regal Cinemas for a couple of minutes, then she went to work and I continued my drive to Charlottesville. I’m still upset I didn’t get to see more of her.
Once I arrive on the U.Va. campus I promptly get lost for another half an hour. But now I’m back. My car works. I have a comforter and a pillow and a computer and books. I have my job and the rest of the summer to look forward to.
That night I slept better than the dead. The night before I’d only gotten a few hours of bus sleep and the week before my bed wasn’t a proper one. But with a pillow and a comforter that thing was better than any swedish support system or the downy mattress of a king.
And this is what I went through to get here.