East Coast Tour

by: Doug

May 24, 2008

Last Wednesday I began my trip back to the Northeast.  Before getting to New York and Connecticut I made a quick stop in Virginia/D.C. to see friends there.  Incedently…Norfolk Aiport is perhaps the nicest airport (to leave…more on that later). 

While there I would need a car.  With high gas prices small cars sell out quickly.  So despite reserving an economy car I was ‘upgraded’ (I forgot to ask for a discount to cover the gas costs) to a Chrysler 300.  These are the fancy big cars that look like Bentleys.  How was it?  Big, lots of room, comfortable ride, and very underpowered.  I’ve driven little Hondas that had more acceleration than this thing.  So will I be buying one in the near future?  Most definitely not. 

The next few days were spent with a college friend and his family.  He is the new senior pastor at a great church outside Richmond.  What did we do?  Make new friends on Facebook and eat lots of bacon.  <p>Next up was D.C.  Its been over 10 years since I was in D.C. (and got stranded because apparently the Metro closes at 11pm….oops).  This time I came prepared.  Car, GPS, and most of all someone who actually knew about D.C.  I was actually impressed by how ‘livable’ it is.  Once you get outside the chaos of the tourist attractions and government offices its got quite a nice homely feel to it.  Parks, restaurants, an open air market on the weekend and even at least one solid church with a great group of people.  I also did the usual tour around the monuments and downtown area.  I’ve got a few pictures from that, but will post those on my website later (in the photos section). 

Next stop was back to Virginia to see my friend play pastor on Sunday (very impressive) and finally off to the airport.  Remember I said Norfolk was a nice airport?  Well only when you are leaving, if the tunnel is not blocked and if you don’t have baggage.  You see in order to get there the most direct route is a tunnel.  If you have to change course (like I did…the tunnel was closed) it then becomes a nightmare navigating around the bay.  However my GPS saved the day and I got to the airport 7 minutes before the deadline.  This is despite the car rental return being on the opposite side of the departures section and no ramps for rolling your luggage in the parking lot.  Norfolk is a nice looking airport for sure, but not exactly the nicest to have to catch a flight from when you are running late. 

Well thats all for now.  That covers the mid-atlantic stretch of my trip.  Stay tuned for more, but its time for breakfast and I’m cooking it.