At work today, looking out from the fifth floor, traffic was backing up, coming off the Massachusetts Turnpike. Then, an ambulance started up the ramp, followed by state police cars, and what looked like a hearse, followed by more state police with lights flashing. As the motorcade headed towards the toll plaza, I realized the hearse was actually a very long limo. Later, on the drive home, I heard who was in the limo.
Wow! My old alma mater, Framingham State, sits up on a series of small hills, so it must have escaped the worst of the flooding. So, how bad was it exactly in Massachusetts?
I had an even closer encounter with the motorcade. I was on my way home from work heading east on the Turnpike. As I was approaching the route 128 offramp I noticed that for the third night in a row there was a long backup of cars waiting to go through the Weston tollbooths so I decided to take 128 south to route 16 east and rejoin the turnpike in Newton.
That went smoothly until I got to the route 16 onramp to the Pike where the ramp traffic came to a complete stop and was not moving while the traffic on the Pike itself was moving right along. I’m probably about the 25th car in line. After a couple of minutes a State Trooper on a motorcycle with his lights flashing goes by and then a second one so I assume that there is an accident at the point where the onramp joins the Pike. The traffic on the Pike itself starts getting lighter and lighter.
And then a few more Troopers on motorcycles go by followed by 3 or 4 State Police cars followed by a couple of big black SUV’s all with their lights flashing. That was followed by a couple of big limos which were flanked by more SUV’s. They were followed by 3 or 4 more State Police cars and more motorcycles. I don’t recall sseing the ambulance.
Then there was no traffic at all for a few seconds and then a few cars and then my onramp started moving. Obviously one or more of the motorcycle cops had been blocking the onramp until the motorcade went by. I don’t think I had ever seen a Presidential motorcade before in person. It was really quite incredible – like something out of a movie.
Yup, I was watching that from my desk upstairs as well, pretty impressive line of vehicles!