Escape from New Jersey
Last Saturday [March 28], when Trump announced that he wanted to throw a cordon sanitaire around the tri-state area, I immediately started to wonder how I could get out of here. Looking at Google maps, I realized to my dismay that New Jersey is almost entirely surrounded by water. In fact, the Garden State is actually a kind of isthmus, which now seems rather easily blockaded. What are the options? There would be no point in heading east, through New York City, unless there had already been a decisive breakthrough into Connecticut. Not likely. All exits to the west involve bridges across the Delaware. I counted 27 road crossings between I-295 to the south and I-84 to the north. There are multiple crossings in the cities of Camden, Trenton, and Phillipsburg, where urban unrest might make a tight seal more difficult. Much would depend on the mass consciousness of Pennsylvanians. And there are some small, remote bridges in places like Riegelsville and Dingman’s Ferry that might be less well protected. There is even a footbridge at Raven’s Rock, but it could be guarded by a single sentry, sitting in the dining room of the Black Bass Inn with infrared binoculars and requisitioned booze. So perhaps the best option, I thought, would be a backwoods land crossing to the north, navigating the bottleneck between Port Jervis and the Hudson River. It might be necessary to seek assistance from the montagnards northwest of Mahwah. But all of that effort wouldn’t solve the problem: upstate New York would still be part of the containment zone. That’s when my daydream fizzled out and I realized that I wasn’t trying to get away from the coronavirus, but to get away from Trump—and that’s not so easy.
Calling Kurt Russell—we need you!
