Thursday, November 24, 2011

Planes, Trains, And Asphalt-Mobiles

Your Turkey Day "travel nightmare story" has nothing on this one.

If you hear about a sticky Thanksgiving travel mess, images of crowded airport security lines and jammed freeway interchanges probably come to mind. Your car sitting on the freeway in a mass of a black goo probably isn't what you think of.

But that's exactly what drivers on the Pennsylvania Turnpike faced Tuesday night after a tanker truck carrying driveway sealant sprang a leak and spread the goo over a 37-mile stretch of highway.

"This is Thanksgiving. Now we have to turn around and go back home," Laura Frick, who was traveling from Cleveland to New Jersey for the holiday, told CNN affiliate WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh. "It's horrible."

The tar-like sealant was spilled in the turnpikes eastbound lanes between the New Castle and Allegheny Valley exits in western Pennsylvania, according to the turnpike's website. The truck's driver noticed the leak when he stopped at the Oakmont travel plaza, according to the WTAE report.

About 200 vehicles were damaged by the sealant, some to the point that they could no longer move, according to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Some drivers said the numbers were even higher.

Yep, several hundred cars got their tires mucked up, turned into rolling lumps of melty asphalt goo that of course eventually stopped rolling period.  Just awful if you ask me.  Luckily nobody was hurt but that's going to be a lot of tires...not to mention 37 miles worth of cleanup on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Somehow, my Thanksgiving travel stories don't seem so bad anymore.

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