the trip down

Well, the past weekend was an eventful weekend. The family, including jasmine went down to my parent’s house in Charlotte NC for the fourth of July. We left Friday afternoon, and arrived stupidly early in the morning on Saturday. The traffic on the way south was absolutely horrific. I have never seen traffic that bad on the trip south. It was definitely holiday weekend traffic. Crisy and I hit the usual backups in Northern Virginia that lasted until Fredericksburg. Then we hit backups north of Richmond, south of Richmond, and again through Petersburg. We thought that once we hit 85 we would be in the clear, wrong. we hit 85 at about 9 or 10pm, and normally at that time of night, 85 is very much like a back country road. There are usually mostly trucks, and very few cars, on the road at that late hour. Not this time though, although there were no backups as such, the volume of traffic was intense and would travel in bunches at 70 miles per hour. I would have figured that most of the traffic would have been heading southeast towards Virginia Beach, and the Outer Banks, not southwest towards Durham, Greensboro, and Charlotte. As an aside, the worst and most aggressive drivers on the road were invariably from New Jersey, the best way I can describe their driving is by passing along a piece of advice I gave Crisy while driving on the NJ turnpike, “ Do not let anybody over, it’s taken as a sign of weakness.”

I really do not think the trip down was so good for either of our passengers, Morgan and Jasmine. First of all, Morgan rides really well in her car seat. She will either stare out the window watching the scenery or the other cars go by. Or find ways to amuse herself such as taking her shoes off, or sticking her feet in her mouth. Unfortunately, this was a seven-hour car trip, and even though she was in day care all day, and tired, she didn’t really sleep that well and by the time we got to Charlotte, she was down right cranky and exhausted. To make matters worse, once we got to Mom and Dad’s house she didn’t want to be put down in the pack and play that was set up for her. Poor Morgan screamed for and about forty-five minutes and had to be left alone before she finally went down for an admittedly fitful sleep.

Jasmine on the other hand was unhappy for other reasons. On our last trip to Charlotte we bought her a harness that clips to the seat belt of the car she is traveling in. The good thing about this is that it case of an accident it keeps her safe and immobile, and prevents her from becoming a 62-pound doggy projectile. The part she does not like is that it keeps her immobile. Jasmine really enjoys looking around at all that is going on the trip around her. However we made it up to her when we stopped for dinner by getting her a plain McDonalds hamburger, which unfortunately due to her supremely delicate stomach, she got rid of as soon as we reach Mom and Dad’s house.