From Manchester, New Hampshire to home

Sunday morning, 6am.  I’m waking up from a comfortable sleep at the Clarendon Hotel in the center of Quebec City.  I look at my wristwatch.  It’s time to get out of bed – and drive another 7 hours.

See, when I schedule PBL games to photograph, I can’t just do one game and spend the next day admiring the scenery of the city.  To maximize my efficiency with the Premier Basketball League, I have to try to cover as many games as possible.  So that meant getting everything loaded back up into the Pontiac 6000 – camera equipment, laptop, my change of clothes – and drive down the Jean Lesage Highway toward Manchester, New Hampshire, the site of the next PBL matchup I have – between the Manchester Millrats and the Vermont Frost Heaves.

That’s right, Millrats and Frost Heaves.  Manchester was one of those “mill” towns of the 18th and 19th century, and a “frost heave” is essentially a bump in the road caused by the spring thaw (it’s the reverse of a pothole in this area).

To get to Manchester from Quebec, one must turn onto a separate highway and travel through Drummondville and Sherbrooke.  I don’t even know if I saw any parts of Drummondville or Sherbrooke, because there was so much blowing snow across the highway, I could only see the tracks of the cars that had preceded me on the road.  I passed through the border to Vermont, and that’s when the snow and wind really began to affect my driving.  At one point, my windshield had glazed over with ice and snow, and I was relying on whatever my windshield wipers and defrosters could clear away – leaving me at times with a dollar bill-sized visibility window out of my windshield.  Yike.

Still, I made it to the Millrats’ home court, the field house of Southern New Hampshire University (they’re in the same Northeast Ten conference that the College of Saint Rose plays in).  Plenty of parking, and gasoline nearly 40 cents per gallon cheaper than in Albany.  Sure, I packed that fuel cell with as much juice as I could carry.

The Vermont-Manchester game was heavily contested, and it started drifting into a defensive struggle in the second quarter, with the Millrats leading 45-35 at the break.  Vermont tied it up at various moments, but the Rats’ offense was too strong, and Manchester took a 102-93 win.  Here are some photos –
http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649

Then it was another 3 1/2 hours to drive home – and of course, I was blessed with a nice blowing snowstorm and poor visibility on the Massachusetts Turnpike.  That, and my iPod developed a freeze, so that meant I was at the mercy of whatever terrestrial radio I could dial up.

Got home at about 11:30.  Was asleep before I hit the bed.

All in all, it was a good road trip – two games, lots of photos, lots of action, and some good solid minor league basketball.

Just the way I like it.