Problem Solving

I’m starting to get travel information in the mail – email. My wife, Rhonda, seeing the end of the long winter, has started to send me links to sites she wants to visit this year and beyond. She may be getting the cart before the horse, or the camper before the truck, as there is still a three foot drift in front of the barn. When the weather finally does warm and the snow disappears for a few months, I will open the big doors and hitch up the truck to the camper and lead it out of the barn for some adventures.

The camper, although somewhat cramped, borders on being comfortable while providing few of the comforts of home; that’s what makes the coming home so much sweeter. As I have said before, I like traveling, I don’t like camping; I don’t care where I go, I care where I stay. Robert Louis Stevenson said it better in 1878 in Travels with a Donkey. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” 

In the past Rhonda has done a good job of planning our trips; not all of them had us pulling a trailer, however. One year we flew to the East coast and rented a car. When we were driving through Virginia, it became apparent that we were about to go across a very long bridge (I should have listened better when the itinerary was announced for the day). I have been on long bridges before, but never one with tunnels that go under the water.

U.S. Highway 13 crosses over and under the Chesapeake Bay where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. It connects Southeastern Virginia and the Delmarva Peninsula (Delaware plus the Eastern Shore counties in Maryland and Virginia). It opened April 15, 1964 – 42 months after construction began.   The tunnels were built to allow large ships to pass through the water over the highway traffic which is underneath in the tunnels.

From shore to shore the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel covers over 17miles. After being on the bridge for a span, the road drops out of site and disappears into an underwater tunnel for a mile.  Then as if it were a giant sea serpent, it rises out of the water for another segment, and then dives again for an additional mile before ascending on the other side for its final arch. It’s kind of an unnerving experience, even if you don’t mind long bridges and tunnels, but it is pretty amazing.

That type of driving requires focused concentration with a fixation on the task at hand – tunnel vision, if you like. There is no stopping to get a view from the bridge, and there is no turning around because you forgot your camera.

Bridges and tunnels accomplish the same result in the end; their approach to solving the problem is what’s different. One goes over and one goes under; both require faith that you will get to the other side. “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” Robert Louis Stevenson Virginibus Puerisque (1881)

Summer is coming – we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I really don’t know where we’ll go this year. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.