SPECIAL REPORT #1: The Trip to Zvi’s wedding

by Sholom Ber Shuchat - The Driver

There is so much to write about, I don’t know where to begin, so I will begin from the car rental. My plan was to rent a “Dodge Magnum” from Dollar-Thrifty, as I was scared that Avis wouldn’t rent again to me. In the end I decided to take my chances, so I went on Google and searched for a free upgrade from a “Full Size” (Chevy Impala) to a “Premium” (Ford Crown-Victoria). Upon finding this upgrade (It's here), I called and made a reservation, and headed to the airport. Lo and behold, they didn’t have a Premium so they gave me a class higher “Luxury”, and the only one available was a “Lincoln Town Car 2006 Signature Edition” (with leather seats, traction control, etc. – See here for details)

Funniest thing was, I decided to place Michael as a second driver, and went back in to the counter where I met "Ken" who was the one who rented to me the minivan which I wrecked (while I was still under 21) and asked him to allow Michael to be a second driver, he replied that since he is not 21 he cannot drive the car...

I happily accepted the car, even though I knew it will be more expensive on gas, but it was well worth-it, a beautiful luxury car for 35 dollars a day... (It came to good use later on).

Pinchus Morozow standing out the sun-roof of the Lincoln with thumbs up

We headed out at 8:55pm with a stuffed car (Six People: Sholom Ber Shuchat, Michoel Weisz, Yossi Morgenstien, Simcha Bloom, Mendy Kaye & Pinchus Morozow). The ride to the border was a beautiful one, with no road problems. At precisely 9:50pm we said the Tefillas Haderech (drawing from my previous experience in driving without saying that special prayer). At the border crossing Simcha Bloom had to pay Six Bucks for being Australian... He sucks.

Well, anyways, the Canadian drive was boring and dull, just as the Canadians who are boring and dull. Action started once we passed the border.

Around 45 minutes after entering the mighty and great USA we decided to pull into a rest area for a bathroom brake and some coffee. Upon entering the rest area, we saw a very unique view, that of a truck three feet off the ground with a slight tilt after the stupid arab trucker decided to take the turn on the barrier instead of in-between the barriers...

Yossi Morgenstien & Michoel Weisz chillin' by the truck

After pulling out of the rest stop, we had thought that our worries are over, and we will be able to make it to NY on schedule (especially after we spoke to Dovi Small who has left before us and said the roads are basically clear). Boy we were in for a surprise.

About ten minutes out of Watertown we were greeted by some snow which started falling on the road, at the beginning it wasn't sticking, but as we neared Pulaski the snow started sticking to the ground and we started slowing down. By our side two cars zipped by, they were racing on the snow to see who will make it there first... we expected to see them in a ditch sometime later...

A few minutes later we approached a patch of road which wasn't yet plowed and had accumulated about 5 inches of snow, we slowed down, and as we turned we saw that the second car won the race... the first car went into the ditch and the second one stopped near it... We tried stopping to help them, but the car didn't stop until a few hundred feet later, where we pulled out and went back to help.

[Our car has traction control, I thought that pressing the button turns it on, but it really turns it off, so whenever i drove thru snow i would press the button...]

As we got closer we saw that nobody got hurt, but the car was stuck in a ditch with no chance of it coming out any time soon, so we did some investigating and realized that in the car which fell into the ditch were two girls racing (girls usually don't know how to drive), and the car which didn't fall had their boyfriends who stopped to help. We went down to try and push the car up, but it didn't help, the car was stuck in the snow. All that happenned was that Simcha Bloom got full of mud from the tires spinning...

Sholom Ber climbing back from the ditch

After seeing that there is no point in trying to pull the car out Mendy Kaye decided to snap pictures of the poor people stuck in the ditch, he snapped quite a few pictures managing to annoy the girls who kept asking "why are you snapping pictures of us?"

By the way, we saw also a pickup truck that got stuck in the ditch too, but the owner has abandoned it until it will be possible to get a tow truck to pull it out.

As we were trying to pull the car out of the ditch we realized that there is a John Deere tractor dealership close by, and Mendy came up with the idea of stealing a tractor and using it to pull the car out of the ditch. The plan was discarded as the only one with carjacking knowledge, Michoel Weisz, didn’t want to go along with the plan.

After a few long minutes of Gemilus Chassadim we headed back to the road, back to another 15 minutes of heavy snow which cleared once we hit the Syracuse area. The next two hours were uneventfull as we drove in relatively good conditions with various coffee stops.

One of the stops we took (planning to be a Coffee Stop) happenned to be an Indian Reserve which Pinchus recommended we go into. I stupidly followed his orders, foolishly thinking he knows the various indian reserves.

As we got off the exit and headed towards the Gas station I realized that the Gas station lights are not on and there is no chance of hitting a normal place so I stopped on the side of the road which I thought would take me back to the highway. After two minutes, I continued on the road driving down that road following a car which seemed to be going to the highway.

After five minutes of driving I realized we were going away from the highway, drifting far away into the mainland, so I decided to follow the car in front of us until they atopped and ask them for directions. The driver of the car ahead realized that we were trailing behind, so she decided to pull into a house and see what we need. As I pulled in behind the car, I realized the driver was a girl and there were 4 petrified girls sitting in the car wondering why six boys are driving behind them, and some Big Mamma Bear is coming towards them. After a courteous introduction, I asked for directions and headed back to where we stopped.

We got to that are and decided to take the road on the left, which went parallel to the highway in an attempt to enter the highway, after a five minute drive we hit the same spot where we drove in the first place...

Michoel then decided to wake up and give directions instead of Pinchus who was just getting us lost, and he finally got us back to the highway. I was just a matter of driving 20 feet more on the main road and then making the right turn.

We returned to the highway finally and continued the pleasant drive. Once we left Binghamton and entered the Highway 380 which goes thru the Pocono Mountains we were in for a bitter surprise, a fierce snowstorm (a freak snowstorm) was hitting the area and we got stuck going under 30 mph on a 65mph highway. The highway wasn't plowed and we were stuck driving at 18mph thru a long long patch of road which not only wasn't plowed, it also wasn't paved well (It's Pennsylvania - The state of the Goldfein twins. Messed up just like them...). We stopped off at a gas station where I decided to buy a Coffee and ask how much more snow will we meet on the road. When we entered, we met a hick lady (smiling at every man who walked thru the door) who gave me a big coffee "on the house" and she answered "Just another seven-eleven miles 'till it clears up". We naively believed her and drove back, believing that the snow is about to finish...

As we parked in the Gas station, we saw on the window a sign promoting “Bronco” cigarettes, and the price marked was $0.00. So Michael went inside hoping to get the pack for free, as it said on the window that it is priceless... After asking for a free pack, the woman smiled to him and replied “We are out of those now”.

The 7-11 miles turned into 150 miles, we drove thru a snowstorm in unpaved highways, thru the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, trying to get to NY. As we entered New York City I get a call from Chaim Hertzl who happily told us that the G. Washington Bridge was backed up because "they weren't ready for it and it is blocked". We weren't happy as we knew that the route to the Ohel is thru the GWB, but we were proven once more that Peewee doesn't know what he is talkin' about. The road was clear. We finally made it to the Ohel at 9:05 am, 12 hours and 10 minutes after departing (instead of 7 hours and 34 minutes as MapQuest declares [here]).