As luck would have it, we had chosen Thursday for our trip back from Vermont. Normally I take either the NYS Thurway or the Bronx River Parkway south and cross over to the island on the Throg’s Neck bridge. On a lark, since the weather was no nice I had decided to take route 11 east across Vermont, through the Green Mountains (and past Bromley Mountain specifically) and then to follow Route 5 / 91 south along the New Hampshire border to Massachusetts and Connecticut. This choice meant that we would be better positioned for the ferry ride from Bridgeport to Port Jefferson, and we caught the 3:30pm across (we were the last car on the boat). A few minutes after the boat pulled away from the shore, Emily and I were on an upper deck when I heard some crew members talking about a power outage in port.Emily loved the boat ride. Cathy often takes her down to Port Jefferson to walk around a bit and watch the boats, and her favorite boats are the big three ferrys. She had never actually been on one these huge vessels though and exploring one was a big thrill. She held my hand tightly the whole time we were walking around, exploring upper and lower decks, dashing from port to starboard and bow to aft taking in all the sights of the Long Island Sound through the metal grate fencing: sailboats in the distance, the receding Connecticut shoreline, little fishing boats, the churning foam alongside.

We were on one of the big 300 foot ferrys and we made it across the Sound in about an hour (a half hour faster than the old boat’s time). After we off-loaded, we ended up in Port Jeff right in the middle of the power outage. There were no street lights anywhere in the town, and it took about 15 minutes to get about half way up the hill (South). We still didn’t know the magnitude of the outage at this time, but it was clear that I would have to take back roads to get home. A quick scan of AM radio confirmed it would be a long 20 miles.

It normally takes me some time to aclimitize to the normal level of NY driver indifference?/arrogance?/self-centered-ness?, but the enormity of the rude-ness exhibited by the average clod upon our return to the Island on this trip was staggering. By contrast, in Vermont, everyone had waited patiently while about 100 head of cattle crossed the road for dinner, and no one bothered to pass the farmer on his International Harvester even though he was doing only 20 miles an hour. Now back home, at intersections where there was a light out (this was everywhere, and on Long Island there seems to be a light every 200 feet), behavior that would have made the most sense - ie: treating the intersection as a four way stop - was not in evidence. If one person took the initiative and made it through the intersection, three or four others would ride that person’s rear bumper and skate through as well. Once a train of cars got going it would be nearly impossible to cross it and it would continue until the intersection was blocked with cars and honking and cursing invariably ensued. Much to the annoyance of people behind me, I let folks in at every opportunity thereby becoming victim to the scenario described above several times. Things became more dangerous at intersections of six lane divided highways. There were not enough police to cover all these intersections, and people were actually trying to get across six lanes of traffic where the above scenario became a very serious hazard. Even if 4 or five people in the main road stopped, one person in another lane would choose not to. I do not attribute this to rudeness, as it is sometimes more hazardous to come to a complete stop on a big highway than to go through an intersection at some speed. Not many chose the safer solution: that being to make a right, travel some distance and make a U-turn from the left hand lane when it is clear, and make another right when you arrive at the road you had been traveling on. I wonder why this didn’t occur to more people. The rest of the trip home was uneventful. We were both very thankful we had made the decision to take the ferry after hearing a report over the small, battery operated AM radio that traffic was snarled from the George Washington bridge all the way out to exit 62 on the Expressway. (50 miles). Our seven hour trip could easily have become ten or eleven.

We spent the night over a nice candlelit dinner with one of our neighbors who had cooked a turkey and made a pasta salad and then lost power. We drank up all of her beer while the refrigerator was still cold and went to bed early. I went outside for a few minutes before bed to see what the night sky looked like without light pollution and it was fairly impressive.

[Note: power restored here at 11:30pm while we slept]