Today I discovered that yes, I will drive three-plus hours for a dinner, especially when said dinner is an early Thanksgiving “feast” prepared mainly by Becca and Steve. (The food was great!) It was nice to see all the D.C. folks, so here’s a shout out to everyone who had dinner at Barb‘s apartment this evening: (shout out).
My drive home was another story all together. As I was on the road, I realized I had only $4.00 in cash and I didn’t know if that was enough for the first toll, the tunnel by the Baltimore inner harbor. So I exited I-95 in Baltimore and searched aimlessly for an ATM. I found one quickly, but it took longer to drive around the Baltimore grid in such a way that I could actually park in a safe place and walk less than a block to the ATM.
Eventually I succeeded. The next step was getting back onto the interstate, and of course I ended up going in the wrong direction for a while. I ended up in Little Italy, where I had been many years ago when I was visiting the Maryland Music Educators’ Conference.
Eventually I found my way back to the interstate—the correct interstate, adding only about an hour onto my trip, and continued north. As I approached the Delaware Memorial Bridge, a dense fog settled in. Before and over the bridge, I couldn’t see that far in front of me at all, and for the rest of the drive, the fog stayed with me, limiting my view to probably no more than 50 feet at best.
I did eventually arrive home, as you can see because I survived and managed to publish this little story. I do have to try to get some sleep now as my plane departs from Newark at 11:50 am tomorrow (today) and arrives at Santa Ana Airport (also known as Orange County Airport) around 3:00 pm local time. So I’m sure I’ll be online this week, I’ll just be time-phased by three hours.
It turned out that I didn’t even need to pull off the highway in Baltimore. The first toll was only $2.00 and I could have pulled into the Baltimore Service Area right after the tunnel to get more money.
I’m sorry the drive home was such a pain–but I’m glad you made it down!
I’m glad, too! Thanks again for having me!