You know...we haven't had to drive much in traffic on this trip. We've been mostly cruising around in small towns and outskirts - sometimes we would have to deal...in Tulsa or New Orleans...but traffic is still a sort of anomoly for us.
So, when we left the walkers at 5:00pm in D.C. - we had to deal with way more than we were really wanting to deal with after a twelve hour day. Luckily for me...Kathleen was driving -the woman is good in the city - fearless really. And, I'll say that I was actually more impressed with her sister Susannah who managed to keep up with our tail throughout the entire ordeal.
"Who do you think taught me how to drive like this?" Kathleen said.
We only had two goals that afternoon. The first one was to get from the parking garage at Union Station to where the walkers were at the Washington Monument.
And that was nuts.
But it was nuts in a funny, hysterical...someone may just get killed - kind of way. Kathleen was...the only word I can think to use is "possessed." But she was laughing, so it was a maniacal kind of crazy that was really pretty amusing. I was trying to negotiate the map, "are we on 17th yet?" "What's the next street?" "Where are we?" "Is Susannah still behind me?"
All this coming at me as we are screaming through downtown D.C. - blowing through changing yellows, running up on other cars -- I kept having this sort of slapstick imagery of us storming sidewalks and turning over fruit stands...scattering aproned workers as we went.
She did say at one point...and I'm sorry Kathleen for writing this, but I have to..."Watch out Blind Man!"
Seriously. And hey, if you ever want to get her going...ask her who she feels has the right of way in the city. Pedestrians or Vehicles?
And then..
"Hey!!!!!!! We're in Chinatown!!"
"Honk Honk Honk," goes the little squeeky circus horn from dashboard.
"TAKE A PICTURE!!" She is yelling at me.."GET A PICTURE OF THAT! THERE'S A CHINESE STARBUCKS...GET A PICTURE OF THAT!"
Alright, Alright. I'm snapping away..."Look at that guy...get a shot of him!!"
We slam on the brakes for a red light (which suddenly now means something) and, shit..."The cookie dough fell off...grab it, grab it!!"
Ahhhh...the magical tupperware of cookie dough. Susannah had made some cookies and brought them for all of us...but she brought Kathleen a little cup of love in the form in pure cookie dough, which I'm sure she ate in a second at the airport. Then, it wound up on the hood of the truck. And somehow, it survived the trip like that from airport, to the hotel, to camp, before anyone realized it was there. So we just left it there. And it survived the whole drive into D.C., the whole crazy day of driving and now...it flys off. No way man, it's staying up there...so I retrieved it and got back in the truck and we were back on the road.
Okay....whew....take a breath. The cookie dough falling off seemed to settle us both down and we made it...kind of sanely to the walkers at the monument. We had to make a couple of phone calls because we noticed that the walkers weren't heading to the Vietnam Memorial like they were supposed to - they were going towards the monument. We tried to talk to Jen, but she didn't know why they weren't stopping either...so we just circled the Park there and found a spot, illegally, to assess whether we were going or staying.
Just getting there pretty much wiped us out and took out any motivation from staying any longer with the group. Kathleen was done driving, I was exhausted just from the day itself and her mother and sister were seemingly fine with whatever she decided, but they had to have been ready to get back to some quiet.
So...we went back to the map (I am..honestly..so ready to be done with driving in places I don't know) to figure out the quickest way to get from the Monument, back to Route 50 East and from there...home to Greenbelt.
And we did get there...it took...I don't even no how long...forever, it felt like in bumper to bumper traffic. It was hot too. I remember the heat.
But we got home, went to the hotel and those guys crashed. All of them. In about thirty seconds they were asleep. Buggers, all...am so jealous of people that can do that. My buddy Corbs can do that too. Grrrrrr.....
And that was that moment in Walker Day Number 148.
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