Traffic from Hell

Thank goodness for friends who can take punishment.

Thank goodness we spent the time, locked tightly in our car, with friends whose company we truly enjoy. Because otherwise, it was a date with hell disguised as a traffic jam. Well, not one traffic jam, but a whole bunch of them.

But that's not the way the day started, so let's start at the beginning. Sleep comes hard when you're looking forward to a great new adventure, and when it will begin at four in the morning, sleep may not come at all. But we tried, and when the alarm sounded at 3 AM, we even hit the snooze button for another blissful nine minutes. But seven were enough, and we were up and showering and shaving and dressing and hauling luggage to the car and on our way to pick up our pals, the Dumases of Phillipston. Since we had decided to drive to Florida for lack of available Southwest Airlines flights until Friday, we were looking forward to clear roads, clear skies and easy driving the whole way. (Sung to the tune of "They Call Me a Cockeyed Optimist.") Sure enough, Massachusetts was a snap. Connecticut, despite receiving the Hatch award for Most-Expensive-Gas in the USA...

Biggest Ripoff on Gas Prices--Congratulations, Connecticut!

Possibly the biggest gas rip-off in the United States is the State of Connecticut charging 40 cents a gallon more than Massachusetts, who get all that Taxachusetts publicity.

...still, there were no delays at all, even though in many previous trips, particularly on the Wilbur Cross/Merritt Parkways, where those big gas gouges occur, and where we'd had a bunch of delays in the past. All right, we had left Dumases house at 4 AM, and nobody was awake yet, but still, pretty good.

We made the Tappan Zee Bridge by 8 AM...only four hours into our journey, and Patti Tripp said we'd be in the capital of the Confederacy by 1:30 PM...if we stopped for eats and gas and fiddled around...maybe 3 PM, latest.

Here's our second award:

Biggest Ripoff on Gas Service--Congratulations, New Jersey!

New Jersey and Oregon are two states--the only two that we're aware of--who insist on "full service" at the gas pumps. What this means is that instead of pushing your credit card into the pump, pumping your own gas and getting to hell out of there, some cretin who can't hold a job someplace else has to take your credit card, pump your gas and, eventually!!, get you back on your way. If you're on the New Jersey Turnpike (Route 95, connected from the Garden State Parkway after lo-o-o-o-n-g delays) the lines are long and the time may be 45 minutes for a fill-up.

Welcome to Delaware

It took four hours to get to New Jersey--pretty good!--and four hours to get out of New Jersey--pretty awful!! But when we crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge into Delaware at noon-time we still had hopes to get the Richmond by mid-afternoon. What fools these mortals be!! (Puck)

Which brings us to our next award for incompetence in traffic management:

Stupidest Toll Booth Management in the Western Hemisphere--Congratulations, Delaware!

At the top of Delaware, which is the only state so narrow near the top that the Welcome and Come Back Soon signs could be printed on opposite sides of the same post, there is the only place in the United States which is a (part of) a perfect circle. In that small circle there is a traffic jam between the toll on the Delaware Memorial Bridge and the Leaving Delaware tool booths that takes about an hour to traverse ten miles. If they installed the same current technology of high speed E-Z Pass that New York and New Jersey have, along with several other states, their visitors would spend less time trying to get from New Jersey to Maryland, but they also wouldn't be awarding blue ribbons for nitwit management.

Welcome to Maryland

When we left New Jersey, admittedly we were relieved to feel it couldn't get worse than this. When we left Delaware, even though it had been worse yet, we were relieved to feel it certainly couldn't get worse than this. So we crossed into Maryland:

Most Incredible Delays With Absolutely No Apparent Reason For Them Award--Congratulations, Maryland!!

As soon as we crossed the state line into Maryland and saw the governor's name--Martin O'Malley--we Massachusetts types recognized the Irish roots of a true politician and knew full well that all would be perfection from then on. Oh, yeah.

In moments, we were in a slowdown, then a jam, that added an hour to our estimated arrival. Originally, when we left Phillipston, MA, the arrival time estimate was 12:32 PM. After a pleasant breakfast at Bruger's Bagels in Connecticut it was close to 1:00 PM. When we disagreed with the route Patti Tripp had chosen for us through the TriBorough Bridge and Manhattan (a decision we will defend forever) the ETA became 1:31 PM. After losing some time sitting on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, it was in the 1:46 range. Following our slow traverse of the Delaware road to get the hell out of Delaware it was nearing 2:00 PM.

Now we sat in Maryland. Not in some interesting place in Maryland--we're sure there are some, although we are yet to see them, at least in season--but on a road heading west southwest between the Delaware state line and the city of Baltimore, averaging ten miles per hour for quite a bit more than ten miles. And our arrival time in Richmond, according to Patti, was approaching 3:00 PM. "Not too bad," I said over my shoulder to Kent, who was trying to find some reason to be nice to me, and to Joanne, who was beginning to feel queasy from the thousand-odd starts and stops and accelerations and decelerations.

Oddly enough, after an hour or two (seemingly centuries) of crawling along with occasionally illuminated signs implying things would improve after exit number 93, things did improve, albeit around mile marker 95, somewhere in the middle of a bridge, for no apparent reason whatever. And we flew past Baltimore, even though construction signs were everywhere, and we were positive by now that we'd arrive in Richmond by 3:30 PM, 4:00, no later!

Alas, after 50 or 60 miles on I-95 in Maryland, the gremlin was back, and with only 17 miles left to the Virginia border, all slowness, aka s-l-o-w-n-n-e-s-s, attacked again, and a 4 PM landing--did I say landing? Am I beginning to regret not flying? Am I losing it?--in Richmond, seemed in danger. But surely, surely, once we arrived in Virginia, less than a hundred miles from Richmond, what could possibly go wrong then? What possibly...

Our side of I-95 in Northern Virginia--those cars are not moving.

The other side of I-95. Those cars aren't moving, either.

Perhaps Northern Virginia was the worst of all. I-95 across the state line from Washington, DC, where things also do not move very well, is possibly the worst designed highway in human history; it is precisely the opposite of one of nature's smartest designs: the tree. A tree brings nourishment through a big trunk at the bottom and slowly splits it along smaller and smaller branches. Route I-85 in Northern Virginia loads cars in at the end of branches and dumps them together into a trunk which never exceeds three lanes wide until hundreds of branches are furnishing cars for that single three-lane road. It doesn't work. Mother natures laughs at its ineptness. Which brings us to our last award:

Biggest disappointment on I-95: Northern Virginia

We didn't laugh. Because we were tired. And because Joanne was threatening to heave on the driver in front of her, who is me.

Yes, we did arrive in Richmond, at our lovely Fairfield Inn on the Northwest side of the city. And we enjoyed a pleasant if imperfectly served meal at O Charley's, or Charley O's, whatever. But we arrived five hours later than planned, five times more tired than anticipated, and five times five times certain that our return trip will not include route I-95 anywhere near Washington, DC.

Tomorrow we're heading for Savannah, GA. We'll let you know how that turns out.