It’s true, unfortunately. Literally. My boot heels have wandered away from my boots themselves. Check it out:
Yes, that’s dry rot. That’s what happens when you live in a place where you use your snow boots maybe once every three or four years.
Ah, well. I bought those boots a month or so after I moved out of the South, 13 years ago last month. They lasted me through three Chicago winters, five Iowa winters and exactly one Virginia Beach snow, if I recall correctly. So it’s not like I didn’t get my use out of them.
I’m writing you from a hotel in Maryland, however, an hour or so east of snowbound Baltimore. The question is: Will I be able to make it to and from my meetings today and get on my way back home to the sunny South before my feet freeze or before I slip and bust my ass.
But I’m getting ahead of myself…
While they got a foot or so of white stuff just up the road in Richmond, we got the lightest of dustings overnight in Virginia Beach.
The governors of Virginia, Maryland and Delaware declared portions of their states disaster areas late Saturday or early Sunday and begged travelers to stay off the roads. In fact, I-95 between Hampton Roads and Washington was completely choked off where trucks had difficulty scaling steep hills.
So I elected to drive up the Eastern Shore of Virginia and through the “Delmarva” region, which was reportedly not hit as hard as the region to the west.
The first step, of course, was to cross the famous, 23-mile-long Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel that connects Hampton Roads with Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
In case you’re wondering, one-way toll for an automobile on the Bridge Tunnel is $12. If you come back within 24 hours, your return trip is only five bucks.
As you can see, it was sunny with very few clouds when I set out a little after 10 a.m. Sunday.
You can see the southbound lane, across the way.
See the support beams beneath the roadway? Those are tripod-like pilings. There are a total of 5,114 of these on the Bridge-Tunnel.
The Bridge-Tunnel consists of enormous raised causeways, a huge bridge and two relatively short tunnels beneath the Chesapeake Bay’s primary shipping lanes. From the south, you first come to a man-made island that contains a modest rest area, gift shop and restaurant.
Which, naturally, is closed.
There didn’t seem to be many renovations going on. Frankly, I’m not sure I believe it. I suspect they shut down the joint in order to save money.
This huge sign outside the gift shop explains the Bridge-Tunnel system. Click for a larger view.
Behind the gift shop is a fishing pier, which is open around the clock. I didn’t walk out there because a) I was pressed for time, and b) it was cold and windy as hell.
The pier is still open but hey, some restrictions apply.
A number of signs explain the typical shipping in the area. This one shows different types of vessels seen in the Chesapeake Bay. Click any of these signs for a larger view.
Naturally, much of this information focuses on the U.S. Navy — the East Coast fleet of which is based in Norfolk. Therefore, many, many Navy ships pass through these channels.
This one is a cool guide to all the ships based in Norfolk:
Alas, no submarines or aircraft carriers passed my way during the few minutes I braved the icy wind of the observation area. This is looking south, back toward Virginia Beach.
To the Southwest, I could see a large container ship rounding the bend of Cape Henry.
Here’s a zoomed-in view. The two large spikes on the right are the fraternal twin lighthouses of Cape Henry on the northeastern tip of Virginia Beach:
And, naturally, one can look off the northern tip of the island toward the opposite man-made island, where the bridge-tunnel resurfaces, one mile away:
Below my feet, cars zoom into the mouth of the first of two tunnels, headed north toward the Eastern Shore, Maryland and lots of snow.
Finally, fingers frozen and camera batter dying, I climbed back into my trusty Deerslayer and headed into the tunnel myself.
Like I said, there are only two of these and each spans only a mile or so. Not nearly as impressive as it sounds, when you first hear of a ginormous 23-mile long thing.
After I passed through the second tunnel, I came to the high-rise North Channel Bridges on the system’s north end.
It looks like my sun roof is open here, but it’s not really. It was way too cold outside for that.
Here, my trusty Deerslayer pauses for a well-earned rest upon completion of the Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
While I was in South Africa, my wife lipped the front end over a concrete parking barrier. When she backed out, it ripped part of my front end. I don’t think it’s in any danger of falling off. But just in case, Sharon patched it up Friday night with some red-colored duct tape:
it’s not elegant. But it’ll get me by until I have a thousand bucks or so to spend on a real repair. Sigh…
I had seen no snow at all on the ground in Virginia Beach. On the Eastern Shore, however, I saw my first small clumps of flurries in front of the southbound toll booth.
Eighty-five miles or so later, when I stopped at the Maryland welcome center, I noticed the ground cover had become a little more consistent.
So far, I had seen just about what I had expected. And, naturally, the roads were nice and clear. U.S. 13 was filled with small towns and stop lights and light traffic, so I wasn’t making the kind of time I’d make on an interstate. But at least I was moving.
It was at lunch, just before I crossed into Maryland, that I felt like somthing was hanging on the bottoms of my boots. It turned out to be my boots themselves.
I hadn’t used my old snow boots in three or four years. In fact, I had to go all the way up into the attic Saturday night to pull them out for this trip. I was amazed to find the soles disintegrating as the morning went on.
Unless I was willing to dig through my suitcase for my sneakers — and I was not — I’d just have to live with my heels flopping around. I gritted my teeth and pretended not to notice all the people noticing my boots.
It wasn’t until I entered Delaware that I ran into icy roads. I checked the state’s Department of Transportation site before I left home and found that only two Delaware counties had been declared disaster areas. That didn’t sound too bad, I figured.
But then I dug a little further and discovered that there are only three counties in Delaware to begin with. The entire northern two-thirds of the state was under traveler’s advisories. D’oh!
I stopped for a rest room break at a McDonald’s just as I was entering the Dover metro area. The parking lot really hadn’t been scraped properly. In fact, the car in front of me actually got stuck and had to spin its wheels in order to get through the lot.
I sloshed through the slush to get in and out of the Deerslayer. Luckily, my leaky boots didn’t leak too badly. Yet.
As I progressed through town, the snow on either side of the road got higher and the piles of scraped snow got very high. Suddenly, I was reminded of my days living up north.
Like I said, I spent three years in Chicago and five years in Iowa, so driving in this stuff isn’t really a problem for me. Don’t speed and give yourself plenty of stopping distance. If you feel yourself losing traction, drop down to a lower gear. Most of all, though, don’t follow the car in front of you too closely.
It is a little daunting, though, when the pile of snow is as tall as the car in front of you.
I might add that not a lot of this stuff melted over the course of Sunday. It just wasn’t warm enough. The temperature on my car’s exterior thermometer never went over 35 degrees all day long.
In Dover, I switched from U.S. 13 — which I had been on since Virginia Beach — to state highway 1, the Korean War Veterans Highway. Which is a toll road, but a much faster trip than U.S. 13. I shelled out another two dollars and dropped the hammer, finally.
A quick side note: All the exit numbers seemed, oddly, to be a little different from what I’d normally expect. When I checked the Wikipedia entry for Delaware’s Route One, however, I discovered this was because the exits are numbered by kilometers, rather than miles like on most American highways.
Very odd. But that explains it.
This is the picturesque bridge that carries highway 1 over the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.
It was about this time that the sun set. The temperature — hovering just above freezing — would drop pretty quickly now.
And I still had another 50 or 60 miles to go. Ruh-roh…
The next task was to basically go to Wilmington and then hang a left to head south on I-95. However, I didn’t really need to go all the way into Wilmington. My planned route cut the corner a bit by slicing through the southwestern suburbs a bit. And there, I ran into quite a few roads that hadn’t been scraped. I slipped and slid around on state road 72 and U.S. 40. It wasn’t anything I coudln’t handle, though.
It was after 5 p.m. that I finally turned onto I-95 south, toward Baltimore. Which, it turned out, was a toll road.
In all, my toll total for the day:
Cheapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel: $12
Delaware State Road 1, booth No. 1: $2
Delaware State Road 1, booth No. 2: $2
Interstate 95 south: $4
Total: $20
It was about 5:45 — but well after dark — when I pulled into my hotel, a Marriott Courtyard Inn near Aberdeen, Md.
The driveway from the interstate to the hotel was very slick and very steep. I was awfully surprised it hadn’t been scraped. Perhaps it explains why there are so few people staying here in the hotel.
My room is very, very nice. You can’t see it here, but there is a minor-league baseball stadium right outside my window: Ripken Stadium, home of the Aberdeen Ironbirds, a single-A affiliate of the nearby Baltimore Orioles.
Here it is, just before 7 a.m. this morning (click for a larger view):
On the other side of the hotel: A little-league baseball complex. Here’s the view from the back door of the lobby, near the elevators:
Whoever dreamed up this place is a freakin’ sports genius.
Cal Ripken, I’m told, is part owner of the minor-league team. Which explains, perhaps, why practically the entire hotel is a shrine to the guy. In the hallway, I found prints of microfilm pages of the Baltimore Sun, from key points in Ripken’s career:
This is one seriously ugly chart on this page:
This charts Ripken’s performance during his rookie year. Months are listed from April at the top to October at the bottom. The balls on the right show home runs. The bats on the left are bar charts. The length of the bat indicates Ripken’s batting average that month.
The fact that you can’t tell any difference, visually, in those bats explains, in part, why you never should draw a bar chart of batting averages. Unless the values are dramatically different.
I sat in this green chair last night, uploading my photos and drinking a few beers while I watched the Panthers beat up on the Vikings:
A big, evil pile of snow lurked just behind me, laughing at my boots.
My task today: Have a nice meeting with a group of folks here in Maryland. And, when I’m done, head back home.
My choice will be whether to head back the way I came or to go back on the more familiar I-95 through Baltimore, D.C., Fredericksburg and Richmond. I expect that route to be clear by this afternoon, but I also would expect to run into a huge amount of traffic in D.C. I’m betting I’ll be better off going back via the Eastern Shore, despite the fact I’ll pass through the Bridge-Tunnel well after dark.
Luckily, my Christmas shopping is all done. Not much is wrapped, but at least it’s all bought. So once I get home, at least I can avoid the mall crowd.
