I finally returned home the week of October 24, and without any waypoint
stops planned, decided to try my old roundabout route up I-81 to I-84 through
Scranton instead of Allentown and through NJ.  After gaming out road-bound
navigation along both options from the split point to the rejoin point, I
found that the Scranton leg is only longer by all of 15 miles.  And at this
point the roads are much better than they were 3 years ago, the last time
I was able to go that way.  Even the I-84 "death race" through Connecticut
has been generally widened and vastly improved of late.

Evidently Pennsylvania had made a "Pandemic project" of finishing a lot of
the seemingly endless highway construction/rework along those stretches, and
now the Jersey-walls and barrels are mostly gone and the roads are nice and
smooth and open.  Very little of the old concrete-slab base remains, the thing
that turns the ride into tiresome "ka-WHUMP, ka-WHUMP, ka-WHUMP" mile after
mile.  Some of the bridges are still a little rough and it's hardly worth
fussing about a full re-surface of many of those, since they'll only get sorely
beat up the next winter anyways.  But overall going this way is now back in
favor, especially since a Plugshare listing for a 4-head Electrify America
deployment appeared in Scranton sort of near where Steamtown is.  Before, it
would have been a very long leg between Newburgh and Harrisburg, a risky reach
for the range of the Kona especially in winter.

I was amused that the route off I-81 to the charger site had me going down the
recently renamed "Joe Biden expressway" down into town, which feeds onto Biden
St to lead to the Sheetz where the chargers are.  That expressway exit happens
to be one of those annoying left-lane ones.  Now, while I personally tend to
lean left in my views and was amused at the appropriateness of a left-exit
for "Biden" infrastructure, I generally dislike left *lane* exits because as
soon as I move over there, some bully screams up from behind and gets up my
butt wanting me to move over or go faster, and there's no point because I have
to exit that way and slow down in the process.  Idiots.  If the cops actually
did something about people who persist in behavior like that in general, it
could be a HUGE revenue source for them in "reckless endangerment" citations,
while usefully sweeping overentitled garbage like the offenders off the roads.

It was unprecedentedly warm all the way up the East coast the whole week, with
temps never going below 50F where I was so the two overnights in the car were
lovely.  On this trip I only brought home one new crate-o-crap instead of the
many more than I anticipated, so I didn't need motels.  Ransacking Mom's house
for any more items I might want to bring home will wait, now that she's back
in a reasonably stable form of living with appropriate help where needed.  In
the meantime, a lot has been accomplished -- some large unused items are out
of her life, I am now the financial part of her brain which she's glad to give
up, and I've learned an awful lot about elder-care terminology and methods.
I guess we all have to go through it at some point, and there doesn't seem to
be any standard manual on the subject since every situation is different.

But I will assert once again, *get your paperwork in order now* if you can.
Having all that healthcare-proxy and power-of-attorney and co-trustee stuff
in place is absolutely essential for me to do what I could -- everyone up
and down the line will ask for it, as they're terrified of HIPAA and lawyers
and the lawsuit-happy culture we seem to have in this country.

And now, I have a yardful of leaves to rake up and a life to get back to.
Until the next major calling from down south.

_H*  221028