September 5, 2000
had to laugh, reading Susan's entry regarding her trip to Mexico. You see,
I know that kind of gooberosity. I have lived it before. Not
so much in foreign countries (I lived in Tucson and Las Cruces,
and never went to Mexico once), but have done similar things
with my friend Steve. Steve and I liked to drive around, talk
about work, women, song, and the cost of tea in China (or is
that china?;)) on Saturdays and Sundays. Since he called yesterday
just to talk about Diablo II (and to point out how stupid I was,
which was more than true), I was already thinking about him...
You see, one fine Saturday morning I call him (or he calls me) and we say let's drive down to Newport News and see the beaches. Now, living about 10 miles outside of DC, Newport News is a good 3.5 to 4 hour drive, especially while Kings Dominion is open (Kings Dominion is about 3/4 of the way down I-95 to Richmond, and generates quite a bit of traffic on the highway. It opens up once you get past there). Well, we're both interested in history, military, so we hop in the car and whip down there, to see the Navy and the beaches. Now, neither of us particularly like beaches, and we can't find a naval history museum to go through, so I look at him, he looks at me, and we decide to go across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Now, this bridge runs from the south part of Virginia at Hampton Roads/Newport News over to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It's a toll bridge, too. Runs about $15, if memory serves, and doesn't take credit cards. So... we wander across the huge bridge (and tunnel, too) onto the Eastern Shore. Now, being that neither of us our beach people, we haven't spent a lot of time on the eastern shore, so we decide to keep looking around (I suspect part of that was my reticence to spend another $15 to go across the bridge). So... we keep driving.
And driving... ending up in Ocean City, MD, where we go to a local Pizza Hut and grab dinner. By now, it's about 9 PM, and dark, but we're still having fun. Cruising through town, we don't really see anything that grabs our attention, so we head back to home... another 4.5 hour drive. So (according to my map program) that's 484 miles and about 10 hours of driving, just to have dinner in a Pizza Hut. So go figure.
I'm running late today, so I'll cut this short. More memories tomorrow!