Frankenfield Covered Bridge

My first choice of blip today would have been a picture of my brand-new hire car sat at the edge of the road following a double tyre blowout after I had managed to find a pothole just five minutes from my colleague's house. I decided to show a more upbeat picture which I talk about below. But first a little of how my day unfolded.

I left the hotel at 9:30 AM to go by shuttle bus to Newark airport. I had decided to hire my car from there. This was a long and somewhat tortuous journey picking up the waifs and strays of New York as they made their way to the airport. When I got there I proceeded via the air train (I did take a picture of this, not very exciting!) to the car hire place, the Alamo. I was dealt with very efficiently and was soon on my way trying to figure out how to drive on the wrong side of the road, how to drive an automatic, find how to stop the windows from steaming up whilst also trying to get the windscreen wipers to work to keep the rain off the front windscreen. Needless to say because I couldn't understand the satnav direction voice I went the wrong way but eventually found my way onto a freeway. All went smoothly until I was around five minutes from my destination. At this point the road was in poor condition but I could not see beneath the pool of water a huge pothole. I ran over it and both my front and back passenger tyres burst and I was lucky that I went straight forward rather than on to the other side of the road. Two very kind Americans stopped help me get to a safe point some hundred yards further down the road, rang the company for me and generally were very helpful. I was shaken up but okay. Eventually my colleague, Ted, came to collect me and we went back to his house for a cup of tea. On the way there we visited a wonderful phenomenon local to the area known as covered bridges. Ted was telling me of a major incident some years ago when a group of students burnt down one of these covered bridges. He was involved in developing a community conference to find a resolution of what was a major incident in the area. He was keen to show me what these bridges were like. Some information is below:

The Frankenfield Covered Bridge is a wooden covered bridge that spans Tinicum Creek in Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania, United States. The bridge is located in Bucks County on Cafferty Road about 0.6 miles (1.0 km) southeast of Headquarters Road, near Vansant Airport, and a similar distance northwest of East Dark Hollow Road, near Palisades School District. Hollow Horn Road branches off from Cafferty Road a short distance from the south end of the span and goes south.
It was built in 1832, and is a town truss bridge constructed of oak. It is the only covered bridge in Bucks County with side windows. The sign on the Frankenfield covered bridge states that the structure is 130 feet (40 m) long with a clearance of 9.42 feet (2.87 m).
It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 1, 1980.

So the rest of the day was better. Ted drove me to a small airport where I picked up a second car which actually runs more smoothly than my first car and I'm now resident in a five bedroomed house all my own. I had a lovely dinner with Ted and did not expect to be able to post before midnight. I have managed to find someone's Internet locally which is not protected so I thought the first thing I must do is blip. If the signal does not disappear I will try and comment on everyone's blip. The Internet this week will prove a problem.

A long day, not an easy day, but I am here settled in a nice house and had a lovely dinner and everyone has been so helpful so there is little to complain about.