Operation Pennmobile is a success.
Oct. 29th, 2012 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_whomSo it began Saturday night, when Penn-affiliated sociolinguists, partying after a long day of research talks at the NWAV conference at Indiana University, started receiving notifications that their flights back to Philly the next day were being canceled due to an impending hurricane.
I got a voicemail at about 10:15, and then spent 20 or 30 minutes or so trying to call US Airways back to reschedule my flight—complicated by the facts that, due to high call volume, hold times were quite long, and that Indiana University appears to be a dead zone for Sprint phone coverage, so my calls usually got dropped while I was waiting on hold. Eventually I got through to someone who said they could reschedule my flight for about 7am or about noon on Monday—but before I could make a decision on that the call dropped. The next time I was able to speak with a real person, she told me that all flights to Philadelphia had been cancelled until Thursday.
As the NWAV party was ending, I told whichever other Penn people I could find about this development—flying back to Philly was not a realistic possibility. This was when we formulated Operation Pennmobile: rent as many cars as necessary for Penn people to drive back to Philly and go back in a convoy. Off the top of our heads we could think of 11 people who might be interested:
An Operation Pennmobile task force convened in MT and LMacK's hotel room a little before midnight. We notified WL and GS of the situation and they agreed that driving home was the best plan; they decided to rent a car and MB would go with them. That left eight of us to account for. We had four people with US drivers' licenses who were over 25, which meant we could rent two cars and have two drivers for each. We determined that Budget was the only car rental company that would allow us to pick a car up in Bloomington and return it in Philadelphia, and the only time we could pick it up was before 1:00pm, and the only place we could return it at night was the Philadelphia airport. And LMacK and MT still had their NWAV talk at 11:50 Sunday morning to plan around. We were up till about 2:00am planning strategy.
So at 9:00am, MT, HP, LMacK, and I got a cab from Indiana University to the Budget Rent-a-Car location, where we picked up two cars. After a brief comical confusion where LMacK and I didn't realize that the automatic-transmission car we'd rented also had a manual-transmission mode and wondered why it was stuck in first gear, we went to CVS to stock up on water and granola bars for the ride, and then back to IU with almost two hours to spare before LMacK and MT's talk. I went to the IU campus bookstore to buy a few blank CDs, and during their talk (which they knocked out of the park, by the way) I sat in the back row and burned copies of a few of my mix CDs on my laptop so we'd have something to listen to during 12 hours of driving.
After the talk we rushed out. DG decided to take her chances with a flight to New York and a bus to Philly (which ended up succeeding!) so Operation Pennmobile was down to seven. We agreed to split gas and rental costs evenly seven ways, to coordinate the two cars' rest stops, and to wait till we'd passed Indianapolis before stopping for lunch, and we set out shortly before 1:00pm with me driving Car Alpha and HP driving Car Beta. (I picked the names.) As JF noted later, "both cars independently split into navigation, snack and communication committees" immediately.
Yesterday in Indiana was an absolutely beautiful day—blue skies, puffy white clouds, ever-so-slightly brisk autumn temperature, you name it—and when we stopped for lunch at a Qdoba in Greenfield we were not yet feeling much sense of urgency. We had a leisurely lunch on a lovely afternoon, chatted with some NWAVers who had stopped at the same Qdoba on their way to Columbus, and got back on the road at 3:00 with LMacK piloting Alpha.
The enterprise might have started feeling a little less sanguine around our next stop, around 6:00 at a gas station in Zanesville, Ohio, when we realized it was 6:00 and we were still in Zanesville, Ohio, and it was already starting to rain. MT took the wheel on Beta as it started to get dark and wet out, the cars swapped some passengers, and we headed on. I drove this next leg in Alpha, as we crossed the Ohio River and entered West Virginia—a first on both counts, for me—and in short order Pennsylvania. Since none of us were that hungry, as a result of a late lunch at Qdoba and cars full of pretzels and granola bars, we figured we needn't stop for dinner until the first rest stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We didn't quite realize how far off that would be, and when Car Alpha pulled into the Somerset, PA rest stop after 9:00, with Beta ten minutes behind us, we were starting to feel punchy enough even before realizing that most of the food options at the rest stop had just closed, leaving us with Burger King and Starbucks.
I got some trail mix and fruit snacks from the convenience store and overheard a conversation between two other people—strangers to each other and to me—about how they'd both set out from Indiana that morning as well. One of them was actually part of a whole convoy of Indiana rescue workers and ambulances that had been dispatched to New Jersey to help with hurricane relief. I burned several more mix CDs while others charged their iPhones off my laptop's USB ports. I discovered that Somerset PA sits right on the soda/pop isogloss by asking the Burger King cashier which term people use and getting the surprising answer "It doesn't matter"—on one side or the other of the isogloss, people generally have an opinion!
The next couple hours of driving were probably the worst, and I'm very grateful to MT and LMacK for taking it on—not only was it dark and rainy, but the PA Turnpike is pretty twisty through that middle section and goes through a lot of foggy valleys and was full of semis kicking up spray and making the visibility even worse. It was about midnight when we made our final gas-and-coffee break at the Cumberland Valley rest stop, with no one there but us and the Indiana rescue-worker ambulance convoy. Here we made our plans for the last leg of the trip, and how we'd get everyone home and return the rental cars to the airport. HP and MT would take JF in Car Beta, drop him off at his apartment in South Philly, and then head for the airport. The rest of us would head for West Philly, first dropping off AKI at his apartment and then me at mine. Then, while LMacK brought ES home in Car Alpha (and picked up her fiance for moral support), I'd get my own car from home and head for the airport in that.
That last leg of the trip, from Cumberland Valley to Philadelphia, was eerie. Not only were there no more trucks on the road for some reason–we seemed to have the whole Pennsylvania Turnpike to ourselves—but it wasn't even raining anymore. The night was calm and still and we swept down the highway as smooth as a breeze, and saw the Philadelphia skyline welcoming us just around 2:20am. As described, I picked up my car at home and headed to the airport, getting there at 3am just as it was starting to drizzle. Cars Alpha and Beta arrived in short order, and we returned them without a hitch and I drove everyone back to West Philly and home. The biggest snag in the whole process was my wrong turn when I was trying to get onto Lindbergh Blvd. from Island Ave. on the way back—a different wrong turn than the one I usually make there, but a wrong turn nonetheless. I dropped myself and MT off around the corner from our apartments at 3:30, bringing Operation Pennmobile finally to a successful close—28 hours or so in total from conception to completion. Here's a map of our route.
I was totally incapable of going to sleep by that point, so I headed up to Fresh Grocer—fortunately open 24 hours—in order to have ingredients to make some chili to ride out the storm with. Fresh Grocer's inventory is odd in the middle of the night before a hurricane—there was no bread in the entire store, but there was plenty of produce in very nice condition. I finally ended up falling asleep around 5:30am; fortunately Swarthmore College is closed today. It's now 2:30pm, and as I listen out my window the rain and wind are starting to get fierce, but last night when I went shopping it was still an eerily calm drizzle. Anyhow, many thanks to all my companions in Operation Pennmobile: we win at everything, and in 30 or 40 years when we're all having retirement parties at NWAV, these are the stories we'll be telling about each other.
All in all, I think we had a pretty good NWAV this year.
I got a voicemail at about 10:15, and then spent 20 or 30 minutes or so trying to call US Airways back to reschedule my flight—complicated by the facts that, due to high call volume, hold times were quite long, and that Indiana University appears to be a dead zone for Sprint phone coverage, so my calls usually got dropped while I was waiting on hold. Eventually I got through to someone who said they could reschedule my flight for about 7am or about noon on Monday—but before I could make a decision on that the call dropped. The next time I was able to speak with a real person, she told me that all flights to Philadelphia had been cancelled until Thursday.
As the NWAV party was ending, I told whichever other Penn people I could find about this development—flying back to Philly was not a realistic possibility. This was when we formulated Operation Pennmobile: rent as many cars as necessary for Penn people to drive back to Philly and go back in a convoy. Off the top of our heads we could think of 11 people who might be interested:
- professors WL and GS
- recent Penn alums MB, LMacK, and myself
- senior grad students MT, HP, and JF
- junior grad students AKI, ES, and DG
An Operation Pennmobile task force convened in MT and LMacK's hotel room a little before midnight. We notified WL and GS of the situation and they agreed that driving home was the best plan; they decided to rent a car and MB would go with them. That left eight of us to account for. We had four people with US drivers' licenses who were over 25, which meant we could rent two cars and have two drivers for each. We determined that Budget was the only car rental company that would allow us to pick a car up in Bloomington and return it in Philadelphia, and the only time we could pick it up was before 1:00pm, and the only place we could return it at night was the Philadelphia airport. And LMacK and MT still had their NWAV talk at 11:50 Sunday morning to plan around. We were up till about 2:00am planning strategy.
So at 9:00am, MT, HP, LMacK, and I got a cab from Indiana University to the Budget Rent-a-Car location, where we picked up two cars. After a brief comical confusion where LMacK and I didn't realize that the automatic-transmission car we'd rented also had a manual-transmission mode and wondered why it was stuck in first gear, we went to CVS to stock up on water and granola bars for the ride, and then back to IU with almost two hours to spare before LMacK and MT's talk. I went to the IU campus bookstore to buy a few blank CDs, and during their talk (which they knocked out of the park, by the way) I sat in the back row and burned copies of a few of my mix CDs on my laptop so we'd have something to listen to during 12 hours of driving.
After the talk we rushed out. DG decided to take her chances with a flight to New York and a bus to Philly (which ended up succeeding!) so Operation Pennmobile was down to seven. We agreed to split gas and rental costs evenly seven ways, to coordinate the two cars' rest stops, and to wait till we'd passed Indianapolis before stopping for lunch, and we set out shortly before 1:00pm with me driving Car Alpha and HP driving Car Beta. (I picked the names.) As JF noted later, "both cars independently split into navigation, snack and communication committees" immediately.
Yesterday in Indiana was an absolutely beautiful day—blue skies, puffy white clouds, ever-so-slightly brisk autumn temperature, you name it—and when we stopped for lunch at a Qdoba in Greenfield we were not yet feeling much sense of urgency. We had a leisurely lunch on a lovely afternoon, chatted with some NWAVers who had stopped at the same Qdoba on their way to Columbus, and got back on the road at 3:00 with LMacK piloting Alpha.
The enterprise might have started feeling a little less sanguine around our next stop, around 6:00 at a gas station in Zanesville, Ohio, when we realized it was 6:00 and we were still in Zanesville, Ohio, and it was already starting to rain. MT took the wheel on Beta as it started to get dark and wet out, the cars swapped some passengers, and we headed on. I drove this next leg in Alpha, as we crossed the Ohio River and entered West Virginia—a first on both counts, for me—and in short order Pennsylvania. Since none of us were that hungry, as a result of a late lunch at Qdoba and cars full of pretzels and granola bars, we figured we needn't stop for dinner until the first rest stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We didn't quite realize how far off that would be, and when Car Alpha pulled into the Somerset, PA rest stop after 9:00, with Beta ten minutes behind us, we were starting to feel punchy enough even before realizing that most of the food options at the rest stop had just closed, leaving us with Burger King and Starbucks.
I got some trail mix and fruit snacks from the convenience store and overheard a conversation between two other people—strangers to each other and to me—about how they'd both set out from Indiana that morning as well. One of them was actually part of a whole convoy of Indiana rescue workers and ambulances that had been dispatched to New Jersey to help with hurricane relief. I burned several more mix CDs while others charged their iPhones off my laptop's USB ports. I discovered that Somerset PA sits right on the soda/pop isogloss by asking the Burger King cashier which term people use and getting the surprising answer "It doesn't matter"—on one side or the other of the isogloss, people generally have an opinion!
The next couple hours of driving were probably the worst, and I'm very grateful to MT and LMacK for taking it on—not only was it dark and rainy, but the PA Turnpike is pretty twisty through that middle section and goes through a lot of foggy valleys and was full of semis kicking up spray and making the visibility even worse. It was about midnight when we made our final gas-and-coffee break at the Cumberland Valley rest stop, with no one there but us and the Indiana rescue-worker ambulance convoy. Here we made our plans for the last leg of the trip, and how we'd get everyone home and return the rental cars to the airport. HP and MT would take JF in Car Beta, drop him off at his apartment in South Philly, and then head for the airport. The rest of us would head for West Philly, first dropping off AKI at his apartment and then me at mine. Then, while LMacK brought ES home in Car Alpha (and picked up her fiance for moral support), I'd get my own car from home and head for the airport in that.
That last leg of the trip, from Cumberland Valley to Philadelphia, was eerie. Not only were there no more trucks on the road for some reason–we seemed to have the whole Pennsylvania Turnpike to ourselves—but it wasn't even raining anymore. The night was calm and still and we swept down the highway as smooth as a breeze, and saw the Philadelphia skyline welcoming us just around 2:20am. As described, I picked up my car at home and headed to the airport, getting there at 3am just as it was starting to drizzle. Cars Alpha and Beta arrived in short order, and we returned them without a hitch and I drove everyone back to West Philly and home. The biggest snag in the whole process was my wrong turn when I was trying to get onto Lindbergh Blvd. from Island Ave. on the way back—a different wrong turn than the one I usually make there, but a wrong turn nonetheless. I dropped myself and MT off around the corner from our apartments at 3:30, bringing Operation Pennmobile finally to a successful close—28 hours or so in total from conception to completion. Here's a map of our route.
I was totally incapable of going to sleep by that point, so I headed up to Fresh Grocer—fortunately open 24 hours—in order to have ingredients to make some chili to ride out the storm with. Fresh Grocer's inventory is odd in the middle of the night before a hurricane—there was no bread in the entire store, but there was plenty of produce in very nice condition. I finally ended up falling asleep around 5:30am; fortunately Swarthmore College is closed today. It's now 2:30pm, and as I listen out my window the rain and wind are starting to get fierce, but last night when I went shopping it was still an eerily calm drizzle. Anyhow, many thanks to all my companions in Operation Pennmobile: we win at everything, and in 30 or 40 years when we're all having retirement parties at NWAV, these are the stories we'll be telling about each other.
All in all, I think we had a pretty good NWAV this year.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 06:48 pm (UTC)you mean NWAV80 at the University of the Moon?
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-30 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 07:29 pm (UTC)Also, LMacK is a totally badass name. She should take up a side-career in hiphop or motorcycle wrestling or something.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-30 01:15 am (UTC)And "LMacK" does make a great hiphop name, you're totally right.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-30 01:40 pm (UTC)You should totally tell her so.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 08:15 pm (UTC)"After a brief comical confusion where LMacK and I didn't realize that the automatic-transmission car we'd rented also had a manual-transmission mode and wondered why it was stuck in first gear,"
I too have had this experience! dukesransom even spent a while trying to explain to me how to drive manual before we figured out the meta-gear of the situation.
I've done the "philly turnpike in the rain" myself and don't envy anyone else having to deal with it.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-30 10:50 am (UTC)[Revision: I seem to have quoted the last commenter almost verbatim, but am not conscious of having read that comment. The things you do when you don't realise it! Oh, yes, that's the whole basis of our enterprise. I also forgot to sign this:
Damien ]
no subject
Date: 2012-10-30 02:19 pm (UTC)