The gods must be crazy, because for some reason, Kara, Kasia, and I decided that it was time to take a really long drive… a really, really long drive. And since we’re going to be driving for a really long time, we may as well go and visit the clan up in Chicago. Pat and Stacy just had little Baby Xander, and since we hadn’t seen him yet, it seemed like the logical place to go.
This time though, we learned from the mistakes in our past. First, we decided not to drive straight through. While the 16 hour drive is possible to do all at once, what usually ends up happening is that we get to my parents’ house in the middle of the night. Then Kara and I want to crash and go to sleep, but Kasia (who has been sleeping in the car the entire trip) is wired and wants to play. So if we stop half way there, we avoid all the pains it causes. Also, to keep her awake during the trip, Kasia’s wonderful Ama and Bupa got her a DVD player for the car so that she could watch movies and DVDs during the drive. This worked like a charm, and she hardly slept at all during the trip.
Some observations about the drive. First, Washington D.C. has the worst traffic ever imagined on this planet. Who would actually want to live in such a place? Now at least I know why all politicians are crazy. It’s because they probably sit in that idiotic traffic every day. All total, it put up three hours behind on our first day. Whereas we should have made it somewhere near Indiana on day one, we barely made it to Pittsburg.
Another observation is that I think the reason the traffic is so horrible in D.C. is because everyone is texting on their cell phones while driving. Now, I kind of expect this when I see some girl in her early 20’s driving in her VW Beetle, but I get really disappointed when some dude in a Ford pick up, or some lady my mom’s age, is too busy texting on their phones that they fail to realize traffic is moving again. All total, we counted less than ten people in all of D.C. who were not on their cell phones. I actually made Kara grab her phone and text something just so that we would fit in.
Also, I noticed that the Pennsylvania Turnpike (which is one of the most famous of the turnpikes) is a horrible road that is overpriced and always under construction. I also noticed that every time Kara drives, it immediately starts to rain/snow/hail, or the rapture begins. Because of this, I think it’s best if maybe I just drive from now on.
And lastly, I noticed that there are far too few gas stations on the Ohio turnpike. This led us to almost run out of gas in the middle of nowhere. It was on day two of our drive, and after all the traffic we encountered on day one, we were so thankful to have nothing but open road ahead of us. We were making great time and Kasia was just about to fall asleep in the back. We had just over a quarter tank of gas left (about 120 miles worth) as we passed a gas station. The sign said it was the last one in Ohio. Not a problem, we thought. We’re making great time, we’ve got plenty of gas, we’ll just fill up at the next one. Well, we kept driving, and driving. I kept looking at the gas gauge getting lower and lower. Kara kept saying that I was worrying for nothing. Then the light popped up saying that we were low on gas. No problem. The next gas plaza was in 24 miles… and according to our trip computer, we had 32 miles of gas left. Then we hit the toll plaza and came to dead stop. Eventually we crawled out of there, and saw a gas station next to a Burger King. Awesome! Sadly, it was closed.
The gas plaza was now 12 miles away. We had 15 miles worth of gas left. We were in the middle of nowhere. I mean, if there was a farmhouse a mile away, we were lucky. But we kept limping along. Finally, after a lot of sweating (because we had to turn the AC off) we rolled up to the gas pump. They were charging 50 cents a gallon more than the last gas station (total gouging) but we made it. With three miles left, we made it.
I have since decided that Ohio and their turnpike both stink. I will avoid them as much as I can in the future.
Oh, and we did eventually make it to Chicago. We suffered through Chicago traffic, but it was not nearly as bad as Washington D.C.
No comments:
Post a Comment