an occasional morning ritual

[rmd]

so, for those of you unfamiliar with boston roads, route 2 heading out of the cambridge area turns into a highway for a while. shortly after it becomes a highway, there's a big BIG long uphill stretch of road. i mean, trivial for a mountainous area, but significant for boston.

i first started driving that piece of road many years ago, i had a piece-of-shit pickup truck that couldn't accelerate very much or very well. by the time i got to the top of the uphill stretch of road, even if i started out at 55mph, the truck would be struggling along at maybe 30mph.

lately, to shake up my morning routine, i've started going to work by driving out route 2 and down 128. so i end up driving that hill. in my mini cooper S.

and so most days, at the bottom of the hill, i start accelerating. and i am still accelerating when i get to the top of the hill, because the mini can totally do that. it's a small thing, but it makes me happy every time i do it.

trivia: the other direction, going down that hill, at night, is my favorite scenic approach into the metro boston area.

Comments

[metagnat.livejournal.com]

I love that view of Boston as well. Have for ages. It's lovely and scenic at the right time.

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

Yeah, coming into Boston, when passing by the Mitt Romney Memorial (aka the Moromon Temple in Belmont) I just stick it in neutral and let God (ie gravity) bring me home :)

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I remember driving it the same way, I had a piece of crap Pinto that would be putt putting along at about 30 by the time I reached the top of the hill. Now, well, I drive a Mustang, it goes.

I remember coming home the afternoon after my Father's car accident and driving down that hill, and seeing the most amazing double rainbow, the full arc, it was gorgeous.

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

It's a wonderful hill with a wonderful view. My first car would do 110 up the hill and 120 down it. Of course that was a long time ago and the statue of limitations has expired. I don't think the Volvo has done more than 100 in MA. Of course NJ is another story.

[kjc.livejournal.com]

I love that view.

It's also where I saw my one and only sighting of a UFO.

[gayathri.livejournal.com]

oh! I remember that road! and that hill! and the fun of doing it on a motorcycle... and the neat view. :)

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

It is one of the perceivable joys of my life that "the front way" from my house to most places I go is down that hill and "the back way" is along the Mystic Valley Parkway. Having such beauty in my life on an almost everyday basis is a wonderful thing.

And yeah, zipping up that hill in the Mini is hella fun :)

[kjc.livejournal.com]

I wish mine had turned out to be the Hood blimp.

But it was small & silver, moved impossibly fast from right to center (of my view), hit a hard left turn (like a 90' angle) without slowing down and flew over me.

Having seen it utterly messes with my worldview.

[cutieperson]

that view is part of why i cry at the thought of leaving Boston.

[unclebooboo.livejournal.com]

I still remember that view, and it's been more than 20 years since I lived in the Boston area.

That hill

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

Yep, I do the same thing driving up that hill. When going down I take it out of gear and let it coast. One winter, when I was driving the sh*tbox, I skidded out on the ice on that hill and did at least one full 360 while only having a 4 inch square of visibility through my front window.

Once I got the car back going down the hill the correct way I pulled over and waiting for my heart to stop trying to explode out of my chest. I get a twitch driving down that road in snowy weather to this day but I still love that hill and that view.

Re: That hill

[rmd.livejournal.com]

something similar happened to me on the central artery -- i saw a car ahead of me slip and so i tried to slow down and ended up hitting black ice and spinning out. the back bumper of the minivan ended up hitting the right side guard rail. not quite sure what happened in between, exactly. i got off at the next exit and quietly freaked out in a parking lot for a few minutes.

[bryant]

It's about the best view of Boston there is.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Heh. I did that up a hill, in a passing lane, on my way to Sacramento where my brother lives the second day I had the RX-8. The 240Z can also accelerate up the same hill at a healthy clip, but I look down at the speedometer, and go, "huh. 99, who knew?"

There's a view down a different hill, that's between Santa Rosa, to the north of me, and Petaluma, where I live, on highway 101, where when the grass is green is just jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I like this time of year!

[kirkcudbright.livejournal.com]

I blew the head gasket on the ill-fated Toyota Van going up that hill, whilst helping Mark & Tamar move from Medford to Acton. (This was the vehicle with the mid-body engine; you really don't want to see smoke coming out from under the passenger's seat.)

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

trivia: the other direction, going down that hill, at night, is my favorite scenic approach into the metro boston area.

It's perhaps even better just before sunset, when the white of the Federal Reserve Bank is turned all pinky-orange and you get the setting sun reflected off the windows of the buildings downtown.

[blackanvil.livejournal.com]

Heading into work, I go over the Appalachian Mountains, which would be considered hills in most parts of the West, but which has a couple of steep sections. In the Ranger, it was a constant downshift and floor-it to get up without losing too much speed, and if I had to slow for whatever reason, it was game over, just pull into the slow lane and try to keep it going.

In the Mini Cooper S, I can accelerate the whole way up the mountain, even in top gear. Whee!

[ceo]

I've liked that hill my entire life. Literally; it's undoubtedly the route my parents took home from the hospital.

[lioritgioret.livejournal.com]

Similar. The Wystan Behemoth -- a 1960-something Ford Econoline van previously driven by my speed-freak older sister, who felt that using the clutch was for sissies -- had to be driven up the hill in whatever gear it started out in, because the transmission was so fucked it sometimes got jammed in neutral, and chuckling up the last half of the hill at 5 mph in suffering third hoping not to stall too many times or just accepting reality and doing the whole thing at 5 mph in first were equally better than getting stuck in neutral and starting to slide in reverse back down. Coming down that hill in the middle of the night with the clutch all the way out was the only time the Behemoth ever reached 60 mph. It is a view that says "homehomehome" to me, second in my heart only to the view of the Boston skyline from the Longfellow Bridge.
The first time I had a car that could pass going up that hill I thought I was flying!

[hariyos.livejournal.com]

I love that hill. I typically shift into neutral at the top of it and coast down the hill. :)

[aidoneus.livejournal.com]

That's my favorite approach to the city too. Whenever we're coming back home from points west of here, I try and make a point of coming back that way, if only because that view means I'm coming home.

[sylvanstrom.livejournal.com]

Driving my first pickup to a job interview at a place over an hour west of Boston, I was chugging slowly up that hill when smoke started wisping out of the general area of the gearshift.

I made it to the interview, but turned down the subsequent job offer, partially because I knew my truck could never handle the commute, and because the salary offer meant I wouldn't be able to replace it anytime soon. Good times.