In an attempt to tackle numerous birds with a single stone, my entire house packed up and hit the road, so that we could visit family, see some sights, and let the kids and the au pair see some things outside of our everyday life in Georgia. All of the driving necessary to hit all of our destinations was daunting, but with hopes that breaking up the trip with strategic stops, and having an iPad full of kids’ movies and television shows to distract, it wasn’t really that bad aside from the sheer time and boredom of the driving aspect which is I guess the burden of dads everywhere in the world when it comes to a famiry road trip, but honestly I can’t complain. The kids were great on the entire long stretches of driving, and we didn’t have to stop nearly as often as I feared we might have.
As for the trip itself, it was pretty good from the standpoint of getting to see a lot of family, and taking the kids and au pair into Washington DC to see some sights. Say what I might about DC as a former resident of the area, but places like their zoo and all the museums truly are top-notch. And the gentrification fairy certainly has done some work to the place since the last time I really went exploring or got lost in the city itself.
Pour one out for the husk that used to be Chinatown, which is apparently limited to like two restaurants and the big red arch that remains. It’s also hilarious to see all the American and chain businesses that seem like they’re required to have Chinese writing on their storefronts, so like you’re seeing a Chipotle, with Chinese characters that probably say like Mexican food or something on it, since I doubt there’s specific characters to describe a burrito.
I took our au pair to a Caps game since somehow she’s inexplicably a hockey fan from South America and is apparently a New York Islanders fan, and since they were playing the Caps during our trip, it seemed like a layup to be able to gift something of a dream experience for her to be able to see the Islanders in person. Unfortunately, the Islanders took the L, but she got to witness the general apathy and low-excitement of the DC sports scene, where the entire crowd basically waiting for Alexander Ovechkin to do something, and the guy looking like he’s playing hurt, based on the Undertaker-way he was coming into the game only at optimal scoring chances, and shooting from the same spot on the ice a few times before coming right back off.
In the past, I used to hold onto something of a kinship with the general area, and have a sense of pride of being a former Virginian. I liked knowing that I still knew the area very well and could get around without a map, take Metro without needing guidance, and generally co-exist with the denizens of the area without much complaint. But during the span of this trip, there were several instances of where I came to the realization that I’m just not one of them anymore, and not just that, that I don’t really like it up there very much, and often wondered how I was able to live up there for like 12 years.
People, in all of the DMV, are just so much more conceited and petty and just generally more selfish than what I’m used to living in the South. It’s hard to explain, but there’s always the smallest of micro-aggressions that I witness that remind me that I’m not in the South anymore, whether it’s holding doors open, being in the way on sidewalks or being at restaurants and being completely unwilling to offer up extra chairs or space. Like we’re at a restaurant with six people, and there are only 4-tops left, but both adjacent tables have people with extra chairs; perhaps it was presumptuous to assume anyone would’ve offered them up to my party, but down South, people are just a little friendlier and a little more aware of others, as opposed to the people around us who insisted their coats or their empty bag of takeout needed their extra chairs.
Mythical wife actually wants to ultimately end up back there, as she has lots of friends up in Maryland, but I have very little desire to move back up there, even if 75% of my general family lives up there. It’s not like they’d all automatically become ready babysitters, nor would I want to put that responsibility onto all of my cousins or my parents, and then I’d be stuck up in DMV paying DMV land values and being subject to all the shitty people and worst of all, the motherfucking traffic.
Because that was absolutely one of the worst parts of the trips, was the aforementioned motherfucking traffic. It was bad when I lived up there with the seemingly endless construction of the I-495/I-395/I-95 interchange, but because VDOT apparently needs to always have a 20-year project on their docket at all times in order to justify their existence, they’ve decided to turn I-495/I-66/Rt. 123 into their personal battlefield now, and getting stuck on a route in which I remember cruising back and forth through in the past just made me feel homicidal whenever I was caught in some standstill traffic.
In fact, while up in DMV, there was literally not a single instance where I got into my car and didn’t get stuck in some catastrophic traffic jam. Going to Gaithersburg, traffic. Coming back from Gaithersburg, traffic. Going to my mom’s place, traffic. Going to the nearest Metro station to pick up wife and au pair, traffic. After my family gathering, my house was going to head back to Richmond in order to shave an hour off of the big drive the following day, and one of my cousin’s said that I shouldn’t expect any traffic on the night of December 23rd, but naturally, there’s some catastrophic traffic jam in fucking Quantico of all places, as if my time in the DMV area just had to get one last fuck you before I left.
People seem to think Atlanta traffic is, which it is, but I still think traffic up there is still way worse. Atlanta traffic is primarily aggressive drivers and poor infrastructure, but the DMV area has infrastructure and a reliable train system. Their traffic is on account of bad drivers who are all pussy-whipped into overly-safe-into-becoming-dangerous drivers by the Commonwealth’s egregious ticket fines and the area’s constant tampering with the road system buoyed by their $4B+ road budget. The overall result is me wanting to blow my brains out every time I got into the car, and most definitely not wanting to be in the area, as a residence especially.
But like I said, this trip was not entirely about me. It’s important that my kids meet and have exposure to my family, and it’s important that our au pair gets to actually travel and see places and experience things outside of her daily routines, so if it means accomplishing those things, I’ll take some traffic on the chin for the greater good. As much as I bemoaned the traffic and aggravations of DMV living, seeing how happy my kids are around their grandparents and extended family, and seeing how happy the au pair was when she got to see her favorite Islander players in person, I really can’t ask for better gifts than those. This is why I often insist on getting nothing for the holidays, because some of the best things just aren’t tangible things.
