Maryland - Day 17

Cherry Hill Park
Sunday, 17 February 2019

I confess: I've gotten sloppy and the result is that I've lost a day.  This day.

Each day I travel I write down the route I want to take and what I want to see at each point.  I also keep a pad of paper in the console in the cab and write down sights and impressions and thoughts as I drive, because I forget them almost immediately through being interested in the next thing along.  Even when I spend a day in one spot I often take notes so I'll know what I've done.  I've found with these aids I can recreate the day in my own mind well enough to keep this blog as detailed as I want.

Until today.  Which seems to be lost in my mind.

I've been puzzling over why I've had such a dramatic reaction to the driving challenges lately - mostly bridges, but also wanting to avoid the mountains in western MD and having trouble with the fast-paced city traffic and one-way streets yesterday in Baltimore.  And I think I've figured it out: it's because of the vehicle I'm driving.

My first car was a Volvo 1800E - Volvo's sports car in the '70s.  Next was a VW Superbeetle - I had that one for 17 years.  Then for a few months I had a Honda Accord that I hated and dumped for a Miata.  (Do you see a trend here?)  I had the Miata for 11 years and sold it only because I'd acquired a 2nd largish dog and couldn't fit 2 in the 2-seater Miata.  I traded it in for a SAAB 9³ - the biggest car I owned.  Then I had a Mini for a few years, and finally drove my mom's Honda Civic for 5 or 6 years.  Then I got this RV.  That car-owning history was absolutely no preparation for RV ownership.

The RV is easy enough to drive - that's not the problem.  But it's much wider than my other vehicles so I'm always having to worry about where both sides are, and where my side windows are.  I have to worry about the height, not just for overpasses but also for tree branches - not something I ever thought of in a car.  I always prized visibility in my cars but now don't have much, even with a back-up camera, which anyway I can't always see and even when I can it doesn't show what's at the sides of the rear and neither do the rear-view mirrors.  Of course it's much longer than any car I owned.  And I worry about the bulk which catches the wind in ways cars don't do.  It's true my light little cars could and did get shoved around sometimes, but it's like the difference for a sailboat when the sail's down or it's up in terms of how much shoving the wind can do to the RV.

When I was married, I drove Pete's pick-up truck all the time, including on snow and ice because that was in Alaska.  It's not that I've never had experience with adverse driving conditions.  But for some reason, the conditions here in Maryland are defeating me.

I don't like heights, but I've driven across that yucky bridge in Corpus Christi over the Intracoastal Waterway many times.  I hated those mountains in western PA, but I still drove on them - coming and going.  I've driven the narrow streets in old old Philadelphia and down narrow country lanes I had no business being in; I had trouble getting out unscathed but I did.

And now I've been completely unnerved by that Bay Bridge.  I really don't think I'd have had such a dramatically viceral reaction to the bridge across the Patuxent River on Friday if I hadn't been so wiped out by the Bay Bridge.  Knowing there are so many other people who feel the same way that someone has an actual flourishing business driving people's cars across the bridge for them doesn't make me feel any better.

I've still chosen to spend 4+ years on the road, and in the US the roads include mountains and bridges of various kinds.  I have to figure out a way to keep that bridge from limiting the next 3 years of my travels.