I decided to look at The Weather Channel to see how buried in snow upstate New York would be. I was dumbfounded to learn the storm tracked farther east than forecasted and, for the most part, missed our home! I drove through the dangerous blizzard for nothing!
I check with our friends and learned they had left at 8am! My advantage was lost and we risked the real possibility that our friends might actually pass us and get to Florida first!
Well. Now it was on. A full fledge cannon ball race, Gilbert-style. There was no way I was going to let the either of the two families of friends get to Florida before me! We had no time to waste! The family tore down the hotel arcade while I unburied the van from a foot of snow and almost a quarter inch of ice. It normally takes our family 2 hours to get ready to leave in the morning, but I am very proud to report that we were ready to go in only 165 minutes flat! :-(
We flew down the highway out of Pennsylvania, through Maryland, through West Virginia, and into Virginia. My driving philosophy is to go ten miles above the speed limit. I think our friends must just use the speed limit as a rough approximation. The first family of friends left fifteen minutes behind the second. By the afternoon, not only had the first family passed the second, they were closing the gap on us!
We decided to cut East to Fredericksburg and pick up I-95 just south of Washington DC, a bold move considering everyone else was heading south on I-81. Everything was going perfect until we neared i95. Traffic around Washington DC is impossible - the beltway is six lanes of traffic in both directions fully congested 24x7. I made the mistake of going through the beltway one year - never again. We now bypass Washington DC by going through Fredericksburg. But for some reason today the traffic out of Washington DC had I95 backed up all the way to Fredericksburg Virginia. I lost an hour crawling toward the on ramp at 5mph.
My wife, Linda, serves many roles on family trips. Foremost, she is the stewardess - providing little pouches of peanuts, complementary beverages, pillows and blankets, and anything any passenger needs. Secondarily, she is my navigator. Her college degree is in travel and tourism and she is an expert at navigating old school - with maps spread across the dashboard, trip tickets, and tour books. I have tried to convince her to try to use new age technology (like that expensive iPhone 5 she got for Christmas) as a GPS, but she likes her old ways. And with those old ways, we spent an hour waiting to get onto I95 while Linda hunted for an alternative route. Finally, I took her iPhone, pulled up the maps application, and in one minute I had our alternative route on the screen. We had lost as hour, but we were back in the race.
We have our pit stops down to a science - like a fine race car crew. Bathrooms, dollar menu, dump the garbage, fuel, go! Even so, every pit stop seems to take 20-30 minutes! Every time we stopped, our lead in the race eroded.
We passed through Virginia until we hit Richmond during rush hour. We could either take the bypass (which would add 30 minutes) or take our chances and go straight through the city. If we got caught in a traffic jam, the first family would pass us and get to Florida first! We had to bet everything and drive straight into the heart of the city during rush hour!
Gilbert luck is an oxymoron that never rings true. Yet for some reason, we sailed through Richmond at top speed. I weaved and I sometimes cut two lanes to zip through an opening. I drove the family mini van as if it were a high performance Ferrari. Cries from the back seat as the kids grabbed barf bags did not dissuade me from my challenge. Luggage, flying across the back of our van, did not stop me. We would make it through Richmond! And we would cross into Florida on Friday first!
With Richmond behind us we sailed into North Carolina. Destination? Lumberton North Carolina, 12 miles from the South Carolina border. With a unhealthy supply of Long John Silver's hush puppies and a diet Monster energy drinks, I drove through the dark evening, quickly passing any slow car by the left or the right - whatever it took.
Finally, we made Lumberton at 915pm. Daily race finals? First family closed the gap from 3 hours behind us to only 1 hour. The second family who were originally in second place, were now 3 hours behind us.
My concern is with getting to the Florida state line first on Friday. If the first family woke up one hour before us? They could pass us! So my plan? Hit the road early while the first family is still asleep. I am setting my alarm clock for 5 am! This sounds like a perfect plan, what could go wrong?
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