This is the summer I'm going to make it to the beach. I can feel it. On Sunday, May 29, I went on my first drive. I didn't go as far as I wanted to, but that was more because I didn't have a destination or a reason to go anywhere than because I was anxious. My loosely stated goal was to make it to Newark, DE and walk around. It was a beautiful day and I went to the pool in the morning and wanted to go to a cookout in the afternoon, so I didn't go as far as I planned.
Newark, Delaware is about 75 miles and an hour and a half from where I live in Towson and just an hour from my parents' house in Bel Air. I didn't leave until about 3 in the afternoon and I wanted to get to a cookout by 6 or 7. I drove the 30 miles to my parents' house and dropped my dog, Gia, off so I could drive without having her sit in my lap. Newark is about 45 miles from my parents' house. There is a bridge you have to cross over right in the middle of the drive. This is a bridge I've driven over many, many times in my life. When I was a newspaper reporter, I had to drive over it at least four times a month, usually more. It's about two miles long, which is half the distance of the Bay Bridge, but it feels even shorter. The way the Bay Bridge goes up and curves so you can see the whole span of the bridge when you go over it makes me super anxious. I have gone over the Bay Bridge once since my junior year of college and that was on a trip to make sure I could do it. I made it over and back, but I told myself the whole way over that I could take a boat back if I needed to. That was probably the most anxious I've been in years.
But, I had never been too anxious when I drove over the bridge on the way to Newark until that day of my drive. I had not been over that bridge in a couple years and it made me anxious. There's a McDonalds on the right side before you get on the bridge. I pulled into the parking lot and noticed I could go out the back of the lot and turn around, but I knew I couldn't do that. Even if I didn't make it to Newark, I needed to make it over the bridge. I clutched my steering wheel and picked up the speed a little bit. For anyone who has never been over the Route 40 bridge from Harford County into Cecil County, it looks like it was built hundreds of years ago and doesn't seem too sturdy to me. The Interstate 95 bridge, which runs parallel to the 40 bridge, seems a lot more stable. It feels more like you're still on the highway than like being on a bridge in the middle of the water. But, glancing over at the 95 bridge from the Route 40 bridge, the 95 one didn't look much better. For those of you who don't know, the reason people take the Route 40 bridge is because you can buy a one time ticket for $5 and go over the Route 40 bridge as many times as you want. The 95 bridge is $5 each time you go over it, which is probably why it looks a lot better than the 40 bridge.
After I got over the bridge, I was a little shaken up. I wasn't thinking about the distance; I was thinking about the fact that I had to go back over that bridge. I had driven over this bridge so many times and couldn't believe that it even made me clutch my steering wheel a little bit. I drove about five more miles on Route 40 towards Newark, but I kept thinking about getting back over the bridge and that I really had nowhere to go in Newark. I wasn't meeting anyone and I did have a cookout to go to back home. I did a u-turn and went back, but this time I didn't get back on the Route 40 bridge. I turned right and went about a mile to get on 95 south in hopes that, like I remembered, that bridge was a lot easier to go over.
I got on 95 and saw the bridge after only driving for a few minutes. Like I remembered, it was so much easier to go over than the Route 40 bridge. It has three or four lanes instead of the two lane Route 40 bridge. It just looks newer and wider and feels like it's just an extension of the highway. If it were dark and I couldn't see the water, I may not even know I was traveling on a bridge. In the future, I will be paying $5 each time and staying on 95 for my drives towards Newark.
I didn't make it to Newark that day but not because it was too far. I'm confident that I can make it there, and making it over that bridge and into Cecil County before June 1 is a good sign I'm going to make it to the Delaware beaches this summer. Traveling is sort of like exercising to me. Once you have reached a goal, you know you can do it again but you may have to prepare yourself for it. If you run a marathon once, you know you can do it again but you can't not run for a year then try to run 26 miles; you need to build up your distance. I've driven to Newark and I know I can make it there again, but I need to build up my distance. And anything is easier once you've conquered it once. So, getting to the beach is going to be so much easier next summer once I conquer it this summer.
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