One of the reasons Mike and I get along is that we both have the same attitude to shopping, to wit: it’s an activity with a point, the point being to acquire something you need, and the best sort of shopping is the sort where you get what you need in a speedy and efficient manner.
That being the case, having set out on Monday morning to get a car, by Tuesday afternoon we had purchased, registered, and insured one. This involved a really stupendous amount of both driving and paperwork – the insurance company being very close to the Vermont border, while we actually crossed into Connecticut while getting confused by motorway on and offramps while car-shopping – but it was kind of nice to just drive around Massachusetts and see areas further from Amherst than we’ve managed yet. (It’s a little nutty: I’ve been to the West Coast, but I haven’t got to New York yet, state or city, even though it’s only a couple of hours’ drive and the West Coast is a strenuous day of flying.) I think we presented every type of ID you could imagine, between the insurer and the RMV – who gave us a decent heart attack asserting we weren’t actually allowed to drive on our New Zealand licences, and had to ring three people to establish that, actually, we were.
(I find the whole licence thing here a bit mad, actually; we’re allowed to drive for a year on our Kiwi licences, then have to sit written and practical tests to get our Massachusetts licences. That’s right: after having a whole twelve months to cause mayhem on the raods, we must be tested to ensure we understand the rules and have the driving skills to be permitted to drive on them. THIS MAKES NO SENSE. Especially considering that technically we get an extra year every time we re-enter the country. So, very technically, if we really feel like not being tested on parallel parking again, we could nip over to Canada and back once a year. They key here is whether or not we have “established residency”, and you could make a good legal argument that on exchange visas, we can’t establish residency. Our plan is to just take the tests – if nothing else, we can buy alcohol without taking our passports everyone – but someone, somewhere, is really not thinking this through.)
This, then, is the car:
We're thinking of calling it Bob (our other cars have been Pamela, Constance, and Bruce. This one feels like a Bob.)
It’s the newest car we’ve ever owned, by a rather considerable span of years, and still about eight years older than every car we’ve been given a lift in here. (I must pause here to note that, given the car-oriented nature of the US, we have been positively inundated with offers of rides, reminders to call if we need to go somewhere in the weekend, of assurances that if there’s an emergency they can take us where we need to go. It’s been really very touching, and on a few occasions really handy. Thanks, guys.)
Bob is a 1996 Toyota Camry, and owning him feels a little bit like cheating, in that chores like shopping will no longer be cold and physically strenuous. I drove to the post office today to pick up various Christmas parcels (the local postie has perfected the art of knocking on our door, then being in the van and driving away by the time Mike gets to it ten seconds later) and the possibilities seemed endless. In New Zealand, see, I never really felt that even when we did own cars because a) fuel was expensive, b) we never owned a car we weren’t a bit worried about having break down on us the moment we got outside the city, and c) the South Island is only so big.
Here, well, fuel’s cheap, Bob has an extraordinarily well-documented maintenance history – we have every receipt for every piece of work done down to oil changes in the last nine years – and I’m on a continent. Technically, two continents. There are roads from here to Tierra del Fuega and Alaska. Sticking to places reachable in a day, we could go to the Niagara Falls; to Montreal; to New York; to Washington D.C.; to the Great Lakes; to all sorts of amazing places. I just want to get in the car and go.
Any suggestions?
Hullo Bob.
If Bruce was the last car that you owned, he says hi, I saw him this week when I walked by. He looks well and enjoys the company of all the other cars in the yard. ;)
As for places to go ! I add Baltimore to the list (waterfront and Aquarium are amazing), if you feel brave venture south from D.C one day and do Williamsburg and Jamestown (but I’d recommend these for spring- we went in April and it was perfect). But face it between NYC and D.C you do have a lot you will want to cover. Ohh the fun you’re going to have !
Hah, no, Bruce was the ill-fated Holden Barina Mike’s parents lent us that spectacularly failed its next warrant. Constance was the Daihatsu.
In that case Constance is doing well :)
Who would call a car Bruce anyway?
GO EVERYWHERE. OH MAN, you make it sound so exciting. Go to Canada! I hear it’s really big! NEW YORK. Go and see a musical (god, seriously, you’re like hours away from seeing ALL the musicals!). Or go and see christmas decorations now and pretend you’re Macauley Culkin (but actually I suspect that this probably isn’t a great idea at this time of year, but it would be awesome. Also not really sure how you get *into* NY with a car, I know theoretically you can just drive over some bridge, but in practise that seems like a bad idea cos then you have to find & pay for parking? Hilariously, I just google mapsed out of curiosity: 3.5 hours driving, 4 hours in traffic. bahahaha. But that’s driving all the way into Times Square which, again, I think is a dumb idea, I just couldn’t think of anywhere outside the city. I think the thing to do is to drive to a suburb and then get the train in.)
Did you go to Boston yet, I forget. That’s on the coast, right, you could go to the coast. Maybe save that til Spring. I feel like saying save the Great Lakes til the weather’s nicer. Wait! Scratch it all, go to Montreal, eat poutine, it sounds like a stellar winter food. TAKE LOTS OF PHOTOS SO WE CAN LIVE VICARIOUSLY.
I spent four days in Boston in August, and Mike went over Hallowe’en when I was in Portland. I’ll probably go back for Fulbright things, the Massachusetts chapter always meets there.
Speaking of French-influenced North American cities, did I also mention for my Fulbright seminar in February I am going to NEW ORLEANS OH YEAH.
Yeah, but when you’re places for conferences it’s not like you get to see much of them. I was in Bath for three days and never saw any of it except the university of… something west something too lazy to look it up. Unless you deliberately take a day either side, I spose, but you know.
NEW ORLEANS that’s pretty awesome, dude, pretty awesome!
Congrats. BTW, there is actually no road connecting north and south america. There is an impassable strip of jungle that separates the two.
No road? Psssh. They’re not trying hard enough.
East Southhampton, Cumberland County, Nova Scotia!
A great place to visit.
Of course, you could visit the home of American brrmm brrmms – the Ford Museum.
All the best for the silly season.
Just dropped by to see how your time in the states was going…
Congratulations on the new car! And don’t worry, mine is about as old as yours. It makes me worry less about it getting stolen, where I live and work (inner city schools aren’t necessarily located in the best neighborhoods).
Niagara Falls is quite fun (I’ve been there too many times to count), but I would stick to the Canadian side. The U.S. side is not as well-kept (we usually park in our country and walk across the river to the other). Be prepared, however, to bring passports and some other forms of I.D., as I know the rules about getting into Canada and into the U.S. are pretty rigorous.
Enjoy your time driving on the right side of the road!
You may be interested to know that NZ has that same “one year on your foreign licence” rule, because my husband used it when he immigrated… but he only had to do the written, not the practical, to transfer it over.
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