Friday November 22

I got caught in a time bind and finally decided to postpone the synthesis of data collection for the crew model in favor of attending Bob Rugel’s retirement party at the clinic. But I got to talking with my colleagues there and, what with one thing and the other, didn’t get home until shortly after 5 p.m.. Monika had completed packing the car and was (impatiently) waiting, so I tossed my rain jacket in back and we immediately drove off.

Monika drove the first two hours to Breezewood, PA, and aside from some stop and go traffic getting out of Fairfax, she had a reasonably easy drive because we took the “back way” out rather than chance the rush hour traffic on the American Legion Bridge and I 270. The “back way” consists of driving west on Route 50, turning north on the Fairfax County Parkway to take the Dulles Tollway west to Route 15, where we turned north to intersect Interstate 70 at Frederick, MD, and then turn west.

We had a quick snack at MacDonald’s in Breezewood, but as soon as I got in the car to drive the next stretch it started to snow! And it continued to snow steadily for most of the next three hours while I drove to our reserved hotel room north of Pittsburgh. My constant thought during this drive was here I am driving this little sedan through snowy mountain passes when I have a big 4-wheel drive pickup with knobby tires sitting unused in my driveway! I began to regret my decision to leave the new Toyota Tundra pickup at home because I hadn’t had time to break it in yet—too busy to take time to drive it. The concern for sliding off the road made the driving a bit more demanding than driving in the mountains in the dark usually is, so I was pooped by the time we arrived at the motel about 10:30 and just fell into bed for the rest of the night.

Copyright 2002 by Robert W. Holt