If life went according to plan, right now, as I type this, I would be showing the lovely Tam and her equally lovely daughter, around the monuments on the Mall in DC, probably sunburnt and sweaty as hell, but still.
Instead, here I sit, typing this post. What happened, you ask? Well, I'll tell you.
I left here in plenty of time to get to her hotel by 10:30-11:00. But after a half hour a driving pleasure...I hit traffic. Not a 'jam' where we were sitting still, but this was stop...go...stop...go...ad nauseum.
After an hour (!) of this, I turned the iPod off and the radio on, and heard the traffic report: 270 stop and go back to Germantown, 495 bumper to bumper and George Avenue still closed due to a building fire.
And what was my planned route? You guessed it, 270 to 495 to George Avenue. *SIGH*
I did have Mom's GPS with me, but I did really want to be running through backstreets in neighborhoods of DC that I didn't know. And plus, any side streets and alternative route would have been packed as well with drivers avoiding the backup.
PLUS, at one point in the traffic, my "check oil" light came on, but luckily went back off. And the temperature gauge went above the halfway point, which really freaked me out, but then went back below it. And Miss Cleo WAS overdue for an oil change.
So, reluctantly, I called Tam and told her all this. She asked if I could get to a subway stop. In the area I was in, I had no idea where the Metro stops were. There could have been one right off the road, or it could have been 10 or more block in any direction.
So, with much disappointment, I told her I was bailing on her. I was just gonna get off and go back. There was no problem with the traffic going the other way. She said she understood. On the way back, the distance that took me an hour to cover on the way down, I covered in 12 minutes on the way back. That's how bad it was.
I stopped in Frederick and went to the Barnes & Noble there, buying a few books. Then I met mom in Hagerstown and we ate Mexican at El Paso, and then drove to Sam's to get a few things. Not at all the day I had planned, not the day I was looking forward to for weeks. But I salvaged it as best I could I think.
I just hope Tam and Kristen found their way to the monuments they wanted to see on their own.
POLT Listening to "Whip It" by Devo
This is go gay, and I mean all three definitions. - Gwen, Eating Out
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Oh no! That's too bad. Getting stuck in traffic when you NEED to be somewhere is horrible.
We were disappointed but there's not much you can do. Sometimes the traffic gods are against you. We did have a good day although it likely would have been smoother with Polt along to show us the way. :-) I do have a sunburn though. Sigh.
Post a Comment