Friday, July 5, 2019

La Plata -> Virginia Beach

We both slept until 8:30 this morning. I'm feeling like I'm getting close to being fully adjusted to the new timezone. In no rush to get on the road, I hit the hotel gym for an hour, not sure when I'd have another opportunity to workout. We checked out of the hotel just shy of the 11am deadline. Unfortunately, while I was packing the rental car, I locked the key in the trunk. After a bit of annoyance at myself, I called a locksmith and we waited about 45 mins for him to show up. While I was disgusted at my error, I was also curious about how this person would get into the car. Turns out it was remarkably low tech:

The black canvas bladder in his hand slips in between the door and the frame of the car. Then, with a bulb akin to a blood pressure pump, the bladder is inflated and an opening is created by pushing the top of the door away from the frame. In the gap, he inserted a long metal pole and simply pressed the unlock button on the driver's side door. Once inside, he popped the trunk and there was the car key. Grrr.

We drove from La Plata to Virginia Beach. The traffic was pretty manageable, especially in light of the fact that it was the 4th of July weekend. The only real issue was the torrential downpour we hit just a few miles from Kathy's house. It slowed everything down and made for tense driving. We kept heading towards Kathy and eventually drove out of the storm. We parked the car and walked down to the beach. A lot of the beach is closed off for a beach restoration project where sand is pulled off of the bottom of the ocean by a ship, seen below, and pumped onto the beach where heavy equipment spreads it around:


We met Laura's dad and brother at Bubba's Seafood restaurant up the road a bit. It was good to see them again. It's been a while. When we got back to Kathy's house, we walked up to the boardwalk and I had a soft ice cream cone for dessert from Kohr's. On the way back, I noticed this abandoned t-shirt on a shrub. Coincidentally it bore the name of the tiny town in Maryland where we spent the night last night:


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