16-Bit Sunrise: The Pizza Run Story

I finally added the photo. The photo didn't turn out exactly the way I had hoped. It looks much better in motion, so have a look at this video if you want to. www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEaflsH0Oro

 

(Some of this is sarcasm. Don't take it entirely seriously. It's mostly serious, though.)

 

This is the strange and incredible tale of Gamma Ray, a man who tries his hardest to succeed but uncannily wrecks more spectacularly in proportion to how much effort he puts into something.

 

Way back when I was a little, little boy in the late 80s and very early 90s, I used to go to Boston with my parents. We used to visit relatives. My aunt, uncle, and cousin. We had lots of good times. Those earliest memories of mine from the 90s are some of my fondest. I believe it was the summer of 1991 that we last went there.

 

It's more than 22 years later, and I'm on vacation. I genuinely wanted to get away from home and see something new. You see, I'm growing tired of the status quo. I don't know if I want to make a big change, but I wanted to expand my horizons.

 

Perhaps my desires were clouded by delusions. When I put my mind to something these days, I go at it with an "everything's going to be all right" attitude. Even if I throw myself into something, I can fight my way out of it because I know I'm going to work hard enough to succeed. This approach does work fairly often. It has also toughened me up. However, I need to learn discretion. This story will make that quite apparent.

 

Yesterday morning, I decided to go to Boston. I had already thought about it a bunch, but yesterday was the day that I was going to do it. I packed and packed. I packed clothes. I packed my GPS. I packed money. I packed two dolls. I have a dear friend in Boston who I wanted to meet up with if she was able to while I was there. I was going to stay there for nearly a week anyway, so there would be plenty of time.

 

I researched hotels. I used one of their addresses as my GPS target point. It got me moving in the right direction. Before I got to Boston, the GPS also worked very well. It hiccupped at one point, but it was no big deal because I was paying attention anyway.

 

The drive to Boston was pretty good, all things considered. Taking the NJ Parkway and then the NJ Turnpike up north and east was fine. The upper level of the George Washington Bridge was rocky, as were the rest of the roads in New York, but it wasn't anything major. Connecticut was nice. I chuckled when I passed by what appeared to be the WWE headquarters. I wasn't expecting that. I wonder if they were in the same place when I was a little kid and when they were the WWF. I was probably sleeping at the time, so I wouldn't have remembered. I did decide to stop for a bathroom break in Connecticut, and I decided to get gas at the service area while I was there. After about 10 minutes of me pressing the help button because I had never pumped my own gas before (people in New Jersey aren't allowed to pump their own gas) and not getting any help, I decided to leave. I still had plenty of gas anyway.

 

I hit half tank in Massachusetts. I needed gas. Luckily, the first gas station in that state has two attendant-assisted pumps. The attendant was nice. He joked with me about "you darn Joisey people" :D Then he wiped down my windshield and rear window. I hadn't gotten service like that in New Jersey in nearly two decades. (Well, that would have been my parents getting that service, but I digress.) I told him that I felt like a king :D It was a nice experience, but it was a misdirection for how much of a nightmare the trip would become.

 

Before I got to Boston, I saw traffic getting backed up tremendously going west. I thought it was a little early for that. It was certainly strange. As I was getting closer, I got caught up in traffic, too. There was one exit that I had to take that was an A-B-C exit. That's where things first got congested for me. That was also where my GPS first started being indecisive. It began telling me to go to one letter exit, but then it told me to go to another letter. Then it told me to go back to the first letter. I figured it was confused because I wasn't moving very much, so I just stuck with the first exit it told me.

 

After I got off that ramp, I ended up on another highway that was barely moving at all. I also had to get all the way from the left to the right in order to take another exit. That was incredibly not fun. Luckily there was a nice school bus driver who let me over a couple times. However, after the next exit, there was a colossal cluster foul-up of gigantic proportions. The traffic lights seemed to be more vague suggestions than an actual control mechanism. The congestion didn't help things. I eventually scooted over to the right and got on my way.

 

It was about this time that I ended up in the city. The city. I can be quite naive, you know. When you say Boston, I think USS Constitution, Paul Revere, a quaint place. I got a barrage of big city NYC-style hopelessness. I could see NYC being less frustrating to drive in, though. A good chunk of that city makes navigational sense. Boston is one big cluster foul-up. Nothing gives a novice a sense of direction or place. I tried navigating with my compass, but that was a waste. The GPS had a hard time keeping up. I even ended up in some sort of underground highway a couple times, and the GPS lost satellite connection. For some reason I passed by TD Garden twice. I have no idea why. I somehow ended up on this one road (a science museum is on it) that was a nightmare. Nothing was moving. It was hard to tell what lane was for what. There was a police officer guiding cars. There was no accident. It was just a guy's futile attempt to tame the beast of Boston streets.

 

I drove in the city for hours. As I was trying to find hotels on my list. I found a few, I gave up on others. None of the ones I found were good options, though. I only spotted a few parking garages, but they all appeared to be closed. I had no confidence in navigating on foot, so making it to a hotel that I did find was going to be another ordeal that I was unprepared for.. I wasn't expecting it to be like this. I was expecting the hotels to have parking lots. I wasn't expecting it to be so urban. I know I said this all before, but it needs repeating.

 

I eventually ended up in a more suburb-ish area of Boston on my final hotel quest. It was getting very late. I was getting hungry, and I was in danger of running out of steam before I found someplace safe to stay. I found a Domino's Pizza and parked in the no parking area of the electrical supply company's place next door. It looked like they were closed, so I didn't think anybody would have minded. I guess I could have parked at the animal hospital across the street, but that would have just been selfish.

 

I don't know if all Domino's places are like this because I don't usually eat Domino's, but this place had no sit-down space. I got my pizza and then ate it in my car. As I was eating it, I called my dad. I told him that if I ever had a crazy idea like this ever again, I wanted him to break my legs. We bickered for a while. He eventually told me that the first time he went to Boston alone, he got lost for four hours. I really, really wished he told me that sooner. I told him as I was eating and talking to him that I was contemplating just coming back home. I was in danger of something seriously bad happening. Heck, I didn't even know if I was in a good neighborhood. Maybe I was in danger of being mugged. Four out of six slices of the personal pizza later, I told him that I was going to get moving again. I rinsed my hands with some bottled water, and then I drove. I tried finding that final hotel for a little longer, but I gave up. It was getting far too late, and I needed to get someplace safe before I was in danger of falling asleep behind the wheel. Even if that place was all the way back in New Jersey.

 

Long story short, I ended up back in the city area of Boston before I got back on the interstate westbound and out of there. That time was miserable, too. It can be summarized in the list of Boston driving annoyances below.

 

*The infrastructure bites. Street lines are faded. Signs telling you which lane is which hardly exist. Instead of medians, they have bricks. Some may say quaint. I say they're too cheap for a few curbs.

 

*The streets are all over the place, and nothing makes any sense.

 

*Parking is a drag. I did most of my GPS reworking while I was caught in traffic. The only time I could stop and collect myself was when I was eating the pizza.

 

*The GPS told me that I had made it to my destination while I was still underground. Ugh.

 

*Traffic is the worst I have ever seen in my entire life. Even before rush hour, it was bad. Then it got worse. I've never been to Los Angeles (or was that San Francisco?), but it can't be any worse than this.

 

*They haven't invented flashing yellow lights yet. There are full stop lights that have flashing green lights or flashing red lights. I don't know what any of it means. I made a left turn at a flashing red. I don't know if that's even allowed. I just looked around for cops and then went for it.

 

*Roundabouts. Those miserable things can get skewered six ways from sideways Saturday. We don't have these things in New Jersey. We may have the occasional circle, but at least it's not a roundabout. Good luck knowing what the heck is going on when you're on a roundabout. I ran into two of these on my way out of the city.

 

*People parking their cars on the road. I don't mean parking spots on the side of the road, too. I mean people park their cars in actual lanes. I think I'm in a lane, and then BAM! Parked car. Now I've got to get left. In New Jersey, we have parking space lines, or we just have extra space that isn't misleading to look like a lane. Boston has dashed lines, for goodness sake! It's a lane! It's not a parking spot!

 

*The interstate sign on the way out of the city is blocked by a light pole or something. It's actually sort of a miracle that I ended up on the highway at all. There was a secondary sign on the pole, but it was tiny and didn't say much.

 

*Listening to the song Radar Love while stuck in traffic really is that frustrating.

 

I don't know how many laws I broke while driving in Boston. The whole place was madness. I felt like I was going to be lucky to get out of there with everything intact. It was really that bad.

 

Once I got on the interstate, it was dark. Luckily, the congestion had cleared up. Unluckily, no more gas station attendants. I stopped a couple times to pump my own gas. That was interesting. I don't like how you can't feed it cash, though. I realized that I never called my credit card company to tell them that I was going to Boston, but luckily everything went through. I was expecting to be able to hook the nozzle to the gas tank like they do in New Jersey, but I had to hold it. I didn't overflow the tank, thankfully.

 

The first gas station was all right, but the second one was more confusing. At one point it asked me for my zip code, but it gave me an option to press yes or no. Neither option did anything. I then just typed my zip code on the keypad which made absolutely no sense contextually, but that worked after 10 minutes.

 

Besides pumping my own gas, the drive home was no big deal. There was a slight GPS hiccup regarding the Cross Bronx Expressway in New York, but it was downright pleasant compared to the entirety of my Boston experience. It was just many, many, many hours on the road. However, the entrance to the lower level of the George Washington Bridge has a section that is dangerous beyond belief. It's two lanes zipping really quick left then really quick right with big barriers on each side. I blurted some choice expletives then positioned myself between the lanes so the turn wasn't so sharp while also slowing down a lot. I don't know if I annoyed anybody, but I made it through.

 

When I got home, my dad was already asleep. I microwaved the last two slices of pizza and ate them. I have never microwaved Domino's before, so I made it too hot.

 

I reflected on the time I spent. I wanted to have a good time there. I wanted to see some historical stuff. I wanted to visit my family. For a long time, I had dreamed of seeing the sunrise over the Boston harbor. As silly as it may be, the video game Stunt Race FX for the Super Nintendo has a deep connection to myself and to Boston. There's one track called Harbor City. While you're racing, the sun rises. Well, it's 16-bit, so you can't see the sun, but the sky pleasantly transforms into brightness on the final lap. Yes, one of the biggest reasons I wanted to go to Boston was because of a video game I played in 1996 that reminded me of 1990. It was one of the things that kept my heart close to my earliest memories. However, I was just glad to be home and safe by that point.

 

I checked my computer and found out that my friend was excited to meet me and see my dolls. I must have disappointed her. I went to bed.

 

This morning, the top of my mouth is still burned, and my right arm is tingling from gripping the steering wheel tightly for hours. I didn't have a good sleep, and I'm feeling woozy now. But tomorrow's another day. Today's not going to be fun, though.

Done