Friday the 13th, DC Style

Yesterday was Friday the 13th, and I was skating along thinking it wasn't going to be such a bad day, till I turned on Washington Post radio and got the traffic report. At 6am, some guy rammed his truck into a jersey wall here in Fredericksburg and his truck caught fire and melted I95.

Still, I thought, how bad can it be? They'll repair the road, and I'm not heading down I95 today, I'm heading up it.

Michael and I were heading yesterday evening to see Cal Ripken Jr. at Tyson's Corner.

But the joke was on us. Over by where he works, DDOT had decided to do construction on the bridge on I-295.

So we had plans to meet in Vienna at 6:15pm. I had to go to Charlottesville yesterday, and had already driven almost 300 miles by the time I got up to Vienna (Fredericksburg to Manasssas to Charlottesville to Fredericksburg to Vienna). What makes me sick about that is I could be most of the way to my father's house in that many miles. Hell, I could be most of the way to anywhere in that many miles.

But I digress.

So by then, the traffic from the truck fire had gotten out of control. The road had never cooled off enough to repair and all the Looky Loos had slowed down traffic so badly, and all the locals had jumped on the local roads to avoid the highway, and there was no going anywhere. Traffic at 6pm was backed up THIRTY MILES.

And Michael was stuck on base.

And I was without a cell phone, yet again. Why does this crap happen when I give up the cell phone!?

So I got up to Vienna in plenty of time, ran into my "nephew" while I was sitting in the parking lot waiting, and suddenly it was 6:30. So I was sick of sitting the car, and got out and grabbed some pictures with my new camera. Got back in the car, read for a bit. Then I figured, well, if the General's not here by 7:30, maybe he went home and ditched me. I don't know. Fortunately, I found him at 7pm. (I really expected him to be early--I sat in that freakin' parking lot for almost 2 hours.)

So we decided to give up on Cal Ripken, which also started at 7pm, because the Beltway was a mess. The radio said not to try I95 until at least 8pm, so we went to Joe's, our favorite pizza place, and sat there till almost 9pm. We got a traffic report, which said 95 was heavy but moving, and took a chance.

When we got to Dale City, it was just plain heavy, so I took a chance again and hopped on Route 1, which was crystal clear, and we sailed down that at about 60MPH and made it home in about an hour and 10 minutes. But damn!

As I was driving north, I was mentally composing my, "Honey, we're moving" speech. Even his little scheme that we should move to Alabama doesn't sound half bad about now.