October 23, 2001 - 1:13 p.m.
My son learned to howl this weekend. Not wailing. He's known how to do that since birth. He learned to howl like a coyote.
Saturday was my Grandmother's birthday, so, since I hadn't gotten around to putting a gift in the mail, much less cards, I decided Zack and I would drive up for a visit. It's been a few weeks since we've been there, anyway.
I ought to know better than to try and get out of this corner of the state on a weekend. First, there's a backup at the tunnel. About 3 to 5 miles. In the grand scheme of things - no biggie. At least the traffic isn't at a standstill. It is, however, going at about 20 mph, and I'm grumbling the whole way about the tunnel-phobic drivers in front of me. You think if they were afraid of going through the tunnel, they'd go faster. But no. They creep.
This theory seems proven when the traffic through the tunnel slowly speeds to an alacritous 35 mph toward the exit and resumes normal speed on the other side. It's now a little after 11am. I ought to make Fredricksburg around 1:00.
Alas, it is not fated to be so. After the brief euphoria of the open road, traffic suddenly screeches to a halt again. I surmise it's the merge a mile or two ahead where the left lane ends and give Zack a box of animal crackers to keep him occupied. We aren't even out of Hampton Roads. Looking bad.
All I'm thinking is that this must be one hell of an accident. I root around for a road map. There's a wide selection in my car - North Carolina, South Carolina. Pennsylvania/New Jersey, Maryland... For some reason, I seem to be lacking one for Virginia.... No matter, I decide to take the Fort Eustis exit and head over to Rt. 60. But, by the time I reach that exit, traffic is clearing up. Finally!
But it's only a tease. As soon as I'm past the exit, it bogs down again. And Zack's finished his animal crackers.
We'd now been on 64 an hour and hadn't even made it to Yorktown.
Argh!
We finally made it to Falmouth at 2:30 that afternoon, after cutting around Williamsburg on 60 and skipping the last of the traffic trying to get in there. I found out later that there was some insane crush to get to Busch Gardens on Saturday. Late lunch, visit my grandfather, and return to my grandmother's house for angelfood cake and frozen custard. Zack doesn't want to get anywhere near the car after all that, so I extend the visit until early evening so he can just sleep the whole way home.
Problem is - although I packed some toys to occupy him, I did not bring the Pooh video. So my father rooted through Granddaddy's old videos and found a set of National Geographic programs about Yellowstone National Park. He and Zack sat on the sofa and practiced their coyote howls. From time to time since, Zack will suddenly stop whatever he's going and howl "aar-ooooh!"
