Portions Toll or the Summer of 95, Part 2




I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. The E-Z Pass got another workout last week when my daughter and I took off for Washington, DC on the second leg of our college tours this summer. I haven't mentioned it here, but I grew up in a town of about 300 in southeast Nebraska. Not a lot of traffic. So I'm always amazed that I've learned to negotiate Big City traffic. I do it in Philadelphia all the time, but I wasn't too sure I'd be able to manage DC. But manage I did with the help of Mapquest. It was a smooth trip down with plenty of time to spare before the first tour started. And what a tour--the college should be paying the guide much more because she really sold my daughter and me on the place. Only one missed turn getting to the hotel where we collapsed for the evening. While my daughter slept, I completed the background stitching on the two ornaments you see above and finished a book. Day Two of this tour was a marathon. We started off in a taxi (original plan was to take the shuttle from the Metro, but the timing wasn't right) and arrived at a beautiful campus that my daughter will probably never set foot on again. Neither one of us could see the appeal of being a student there. Then another taxi into the city (again, I had planned to take the shuttle and the Metro, but it was raining and I had forgotten my umbrella). Another information session (attended by some of the same people we saw at the first campus), a tour and two hours later, we were on the Metro back to the hotel to pick up the car. And head home at 5:00. There is a point in Arlington where six lanes converge into three. I remember my dad getting our green Chevy station wagon through that point when I was about 9 and last week it was my turn to squeeze the minivan in among all those cars. The traffic was crawling, but that gave me plenty of time to point out the monuments and the Capitol Building to my daughter. But what is with those exits on the left? And how come I was always in the far right lane when I needed to take one?
Tomorrow we embark on the last leg of this adventure. I'll only need to go on I-95 for a few miles to get to the airport. That I can manage.

Comments

  1. Nancy Near PhiladelphiaJuly 30, 2009 at 3:30 PM

    My younger son went to GW and loved the experience of a DC education. In fact, he's still there after graduating six or eight years ago!

    ReplyDelete

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