On Sat, 27 Dec 2014 15:09:52 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

Made it back to MA. I learned one thing. A Ford SuperDuty is *not* the
vehicle to travel the Cross Bronx Expressway in heavy traffic.
Everyone's doing about 80 and the friggin' truck is sprung so heavy that
when I hit one of the notorious bumps in the road it wanted to bounce
into the next lane. Should have put about 2,000 lbs of weight in the
bed.

Coming up the New Jersey Turnpike I saw a gazillion blue flashing lights
in the fast lane ahead. I gained on them and realized there was about a
2 miles of cop cars traveling towards New York. As I drove along more
and more cop cars joined in the progression. They included NJ State
Troopers, Delaware and Maryland State Troopers, along with a whole bunch
of small town cop cars.

They all exited as we approached NYC. On the other side of the GWB
I saw more cop cars heading south, some escorting Peter Pan buses full
of (what I assume to be) more cops.

I then realized that the funeral for one of the NYC cops that was killed
was going on today. There must have been thousands of cops from all
over the northeast attending.

===

The Cross Bronx Distressway is arguably the worst road in the NYC
area. I traveled it twice a day for many years after our
intergalactic Ops Center relocated to NJ. Some days you'd be
exhausted and stressed out before you started work. Other days you'd
go breezing right in with a nice view of the Hudson River much of the
way.

By far my most memorable commute was the morning of 9-11-2001 when I
saw the north tower of the World Trade Center burning like the olympic
torch. My first reaction was to ask myself how such a large fire
could get started so quickly. My second reaction was to say holy
sh*t, this is going to be an incredible disaster. Little did I know.