If dear Liza Minelli had known the New York that I came to know in the last day and a half, she would have drastically altered the words to her signature song, "New York, New York." I'm sure it's a delightful place if your normal mode of transportation is a limousine. For the rest of us mere mortals, it's as close to  third world driving conditions as anything I've seen since deploying to any number of actual third world countries.

I had a trailer full of paper rolls that had to be delivered in Yonkers, New York, which for the happily untutored, is north of the Bronx. The load had to be delivered Friday morning early, so I hit the highway from Carlisle, PA at about 4AM. The rain started shortly thereafter and never stopped. It wasn't pouring,..just a steady drizzle of misery. I took I-78 from I-81 and made my way into New Jersey. I used to think that my home state of Louisiana had the worst roads in the country. I was mistaken. New Jersey would be better served to fire it's road crews and instead pave the highway with giant leggos (the bumpy knob-riddled interconnecting plastic blocks) for a smoother ride than that currently suffered by the wretched souls who must commute through that hideous state.

Of course, in order to have the privilege of driving on roads so riddled with potholes, so treacherously and deeply scarred with successive and incrementally uneven patches of bad repair work as to almost throw your vehicle off the road altogether, one must fork over some money. The worse the road, the more toll booths spring up in the middle of the highway. Really deep craters can germinate a fresh toll booth every 100 meters or so. These people are taxed to death up here. Businesses are evacuating the state like survivors from the Titanic and so the state government in typical leftist fashion continues to increase taxes on those who can't leave. In return for this, people in New Jersey can expect roads that will tear their vehicles to pieces, cramped living conditions that have people hemmed in tighter than Pavarotti in spandex, a crime rate that puts every man woman and child in mortal danger, and government confiscation of earnings at a level that would make Lenin blush. Welcome to liberal utopia.

As bad as New Jersey is, it has one thing to brag about. It ain't New York City. New York City is everything New Jersey is, only there is more of it. More tolls, more dangerously bad roads (a point I will prove in due course), more crime, more people jammed in, etc. etc., world without end, a-men. I crossed the George Washington Bridge (the father of our country would deny child support to this place), bounced like Captain Kangaroo through the tunnels that signal one's entrance to the Bronx, and then found the ramp to get on I-87 going north. Now, interstate highways that go north / south, typically have the exits numbered with the lowest numbered exits in the south, then going higher in number with the highest number being the last exit before one leaves the state in the north. But this is New York. I was to find Exit 2,…so when I got onto I-87, I was greeted by Exit 7. Using the hands free thingy on my phone, I called the warehouse to hear the recorded directions message which again said to take I-87 north to Exit 2. The exit numbers reached 14, I think, when I thought I should pull over to call the warehouse and speak to a live person to sort this out. But then,…the next exit I saw was Exit 1!! Anyone that can make sense of this, please move to New York. Next came Exit 2, and I took it. That's when it got really interesting.

I had entered a placed called Yonkers, New York. Yonkers is an old Latin term, which means Honkers. Honking, you see, is the primary means of safe driving in the area. It is also the substitute for brakes, steering, driving with one's eyes open, and driving with one's head placed anywhere other than squarely up one's arse. Yonkers has an overabundance of streets and cars and pedestrians, but a severe scarcity of street signs. I was looking for a specific street, and came upon this narrow little path lined with cars on both sides, traffic backed up, people all over the place and thought, "Nah, that couldn't be it." But there on the very far corner was a little sign with letters so small you had to practically pass it to read it,..and yuppers, that was my street. So I made the left turn and began negotiating cars parked on the side of the street, cars parked in the travel lanes of the street, cars coming directly at my 80,000 lb. vehicle full speed as I tried to get around the cars that were parked in the travel lanes of the street, etc. After a mile and a half of this fun, I found my next street, which called for a right turn. Of course, there was the obligatory light pole right on the corner, and traffic all over the lanes so that it was impossible to make the turn while attached to a 53 foot trailer without taking up all the lanes, the sidewalk, etc. I waited for a break in the traffic, however slight, and made the turn. This street would continue all the way to the banks of the Hudson River.

This little stretch of heaven featured even more narrow roads with virtually no room to pass, cars parked on the side so poorly that my trailer missed their side mirrors by an inch or so, very low bridges and overpasses with no signs stating the height of the things, etc. This joyride to the Hudson culminated with a very long and steep descent down a very tall and steep hill ending at a "T" intersection at the riverside. I was very concerned that I might lose traction and slide to the bottom of the hill. With a trailer, at least I would have widened the road a bit.

At the bottom of the hill, I made a right turn and found the warehouse, which of course didn't have any signs to designate it as the correct place. The folks there were kind enough to unload the trailer within an hour and I was set for the trip back. Looking for my road away from the Hudson and back toward the interstate, I was distracted by people stopping their cars right in front of me, on the road, and going into the adjacent business to do whatever it was they came to do, other people trying to get around them by cutting me off, city buses rocketing down the road like dragsters, and other symptoms of the hospitality and warm spirit this little slice of Hell is known for. Finally, I got around the people who used the travel lanes as their own reserved parking space, and was looking for a street sign to show me which street to take out of this place, the sign wasn't there. You see, there are fine upstanding members of the community up here in this collectivist paradise that remove the street signs so as to confuse truckers who, in due course, get stuck somewhere and leave themselves vulnerable to being robbed (the citizens are just trying imitate the example set by their government). In short order, I was staring at a sign that said that the clearance on the bridge in front of me was 10'1". My truck stands at 13'6". This was a problem. Backing up was not an option because of the mass of traffic rushing up from behind me. There was no place to pull over, no place to turn around,…I was stuck.

So I called my dispatcher and announced my general discontent with this assignment and asked her to contact the Yonkers police to see if they could manage traffic for me so I could back up and escape. She patched me through, I told the dispatcher what happened, and she said officers would be enroute. Meanwhile, traffic on this two lane street utilized the one lane that was open to them by rushing at each other at high speeds while honking their horns to see who would chicken out first. The size of the vehicles had no deterrent factor. A Geo Metro would take on a school bus or a bicycle. Any number of people waved at me in a fashion confirming that I indeed am Number One as far as they are concerned. I was touched. An hour later, I called Yonkers' finest back to see if they might make time in their schedule to assist me, and was told that another truck had met a similar fate and I was next in line after that. I advised that some investment in signs might preclude this sort of thing from happening so often. I thought about calling them back and telling them I was being robbed, which given the sort of folks walking up and down the street watching me, was a reasonable prediction. Finally, after 3 hours of waiting, a police cruiser pulled up and the officer asked if I needed to back up. I said yes, and he got behind the trailer, hit the lights and siren and bullhorn and instructed traffic to back up out of my path. It took awhile, as the good folks of Honkers kept trying to defy the officer and my trailer. Finally, I got to the street I needed, and it took all the lanes available to make the turn (Honkers' streets were not made for anything larger than a VW minibus).

Upon starting my ascent back up that very steep hill, I saw another 18 wheeler in front of me, stopped midway up the hill. The officer that had helped me was now talking to this driver. He advised all of us to back up. Evidently, the truck couldn't make it up the hill due to the angle of ascent and the slick roads (it was raining). We all backed up and gave him room to back to a more level surface and then get a running start. He made it. Then it was my turn. I got about halfway up,…to the first intersection, when the light turned red and I had to back off the throttle. I lost traction and just sat there with my drive tires spinning. The officer was not happy,..but there was nothing I could do. He called more officers to block the next two intersections (full of angry traffic). I backed down the hill and got a running start again. The road was in bad condition with so many bumps and holes that keeping traction was even more difficult. Add water to that road, and it gets ugly. My tires kept losing traction and spinning, which caused the whole 80'+ vehicle to fish-tale uphill. With officers blocking two intersections, I blasted through the red lights, with cars parked to my right, and opposing traffic inching toward me on the left, all while trying to keep the trailer from swinging around while my tires intermittently lost traction. I made it to the top of the hill sweating bullets. Unbelievable.

By this time, it was afternoon rush hour. Traffic going back over the George Washington into New Jersey, and then on the NJ Turnpike headed south, was crazy, nigh suicidal. I saw wrecks. I saw people evidently trying to run into my truck as their lane merged into mine. I saw people refuse to allow me to move over into a lane that was designated for trucks. My air horn got a tremendous workout. Finally arriving at a drop lot to get rid of the empty trailer, I went to the one truckstop nearby, and found that they charge money for overnight parking,…and it was nothing more than a dirt lot next to a gas station. The hospitality up here truly knows no bounds. So I went back to the drop lot, parked next to a porta potty, and slept for the night.

This morning, I had to go into Jersey City, just across the river from Manhatten. Picked up a loaded trailer bound for North Carolina, and then got lost trying to get back to the highway. They just don't believe in signs. I was headed for the Holland Tunnel when I found an exit and got turned around. On the positive side, I drove right next to Liberty Park, where people go to visit the Statue of Liberty. The sight of that majestic lady standing the harbor brought a welling in my throat. She stands for liberty and the freedom to pursue excellence,…or not. Mark Twain observed that the Constitution gives us the unalienable right to make asses of ourselves, a right which the people of this area exercise the fullest. Surveying the mass of anger, rudeness, and misery that surrounds Lady Liberty, I wonder if the states of New York and New Jersey wouldn't be better advised to purchase a blindfold for her. They could fund it by yet another toll increase.