Some days it’s hard to find the Atlantic Ocean

A Column by John Estridge

I introduced myself to Brian like this: “Pardon me, my name is John; I’m from Indiana; and I am lost.”

Having never been to an AA meeting, but having seen them on TV, I felt like I had said the opening introduction at an AA meeting before the person begins speaking.

Brian turned around, showing me his name tag where I found out the back of the person I was staring at in the blue vest was named Brian. He was wearing shorts with two legs showing that were heavily tattooed. I tried not to stare. We were the product-side of the cash registers in a Lowes. Brian looked kind of intrigued and kind of happy to be pulled out of wherever he was going and whatever he was supposed to be doing.

“Where do you want to go?” Brian asked.

Biting back several responses, that would not help me in any shape, form or fashion, but still those bad responses wanted to get out because part of me is still 13, I told him the truth.

“I know I am at Virginia Beach, but I want to be at the beach at Virginia Beach.”

My Long Suffering Wife Ruth and I had been lost for about 90 minutes to 12 days. We did well at not getting lost on the first day of our vacation, and we had discussed how proud we were at having done so well. As the saying goes: pride goeth before a fall or being horribly lost.

This should not surprise anyone, but most of our situation, well — all of our situation — was my fault.

When I looked on Google for the best route from Brookville Indiana to Nags Head North Carolina by way of White Sulphur Springs West Virginia, I was given three choices. I wanted to take the “C” option. That was to go south and east from just beyond White Sulphur Springs to Nags Head, but I realized on closer inspection, it would add about 90 minutes to my trip. The reason I wanted to go that way is the only major city I would have to drive through was Raleigh, North Carolina. (Ninety minutes is ironic, isn’t it)?

Option A was the shortest, quickest route, but I had to go through Richmond, Virginia and Norfolk, Virginia. And people on the website warned about Norfolk. I didn’t understand that at the time. I worried about Richmond. But now I understand why people were talking about Norfolk.

One of the things I did when we were heading from Richmond to Norfolk was tell Ruth how people in Virginia say Norfolk. They say the first syllable and then they say the last syllable in a rush that sounds like something bad. I kept doing it until Ruth said if I opened my mouth again, well I didn’t really want to know those alternatives so I shut up.

Another thing she told me to stop saying when we were lost was “I should have stopped in Charlottesville, (Virginia).”

So, I stopped saying that, also. Ask people I used to work with at Whitewater Publications before I got fired, and they will tell you “John, can really get on one’s nerves.”

Ruth organized that choir shortly after she met me.

When I drove past Charlottesville, I really believed there would be an exit between Charlottesville and Richmond, which would have several motels/hotels to choose from, which means there would be some decent restaurants.

There are none.

We spent Monday visiting White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. More precisely, we visited the Barnwood Builders store and Boneyard as well as Paisley Park in White Sulphur Springs. The Barnwood Builders helped rebuild the park after a devastating flood hit the town.

For those who do not know who or what Barnwood Builders is, it is a series on the DIY Network. Since I am so handy, we watch that network all the time. We really like Barnwood Builders and Maine Cabin Masters.

We were a little disappointed with the store. During commercials to the show, the guy who owns Barnwood Builders, Mark Bowe, shows how to make simple items out of barnwood. I thought the items he and the others on the show make out of barnwood would be offered for sale at the store.

Instead, they have coffee mugs and T-shirts. The store is the size of Bobby Evans old Nationwide office on Main Street in Brookville without Bobby’s ambience. I thought it would be bigger, but you can get a lot of coffee mugs and T-shirts in a small area.

We did enjoy the ride out to the boneyard and getting to stop outside the barbed wire fence around the boneyard. Ruth and I both took photos. And there were a couple of the log cabins they had dismantled somewhere else and put back together in the boneyard close enough to the fence to see how they had marked each one as they took them apart so they could put them back together again. And one could see how the pioneers had worked hard to make them all fit together, and they had very poor tools to do all that with. I have trouble nailing some plywood to a 2×4 or vice versa using a nail gun.

The ride back to White Sulphur Springs was also nice. It is through mountains, and they were multi-colored with the leaves changing. We ate a picnic lunch at Paisley Park. Both of us had viewed that episode together so it was nice to see the place in person. After eating, we walked through the shelter they built out of barnwood and looked at the fine workmanship they had used.

Then, we left for our next destination, which was supposed to be somewhere between White Sulphur Springs and the Outer Banks, North Carolina. I thought it would be too far for me to drive the entire way, because I am old and a pansy. That was why I was going to stop between Charlottesville and Richmond. But as I got farther from Charlottesville and closer to Richmond, I realized there was not going to be anywhere to stop, so then I worried about rush hour in Richmond.

I don’t like rush hour in Brookville or Liberty if we had them.

Thus, I started to go the speed of traffic which is sometimes called Warp Speed in old Star Trek episodes.

But I passed a scenic lookout pulloff in the Virginia mountains on a beautiful fall afternoon and thought to myself what the meaning of vacation really is. So, at the next scenic turnoff, I pulled in. The other reason I pulled in was I thought the sign said it had restrooms. COVID has shut down a bunch of public restrooms. I don’t know if the CDC is telling things I don’t read them telling, like people will not get the virus if their bladders are always full and they are uncomfortable. I really don’t believe that if that is true. I was just very uncomfortable and got on Ruth’s nerves some more because I continued to squirm in the driver’s seat.

This is out of order but Ruth and I were in an Elizabethan flower garden at Roanoke Island North Carolina, and all of their restrooms were padlocked so they must believe that premise. I was going to water their flowers for them, but Ruth forbade it with more threats.

Instead, I squirmed as I walked, and when I stood still, my legs were crossed, which caused me to lose my balance more than once.

But back at the Scenic View on I-64 in Virginia that did not have restrooms, Ruth and I watched a young couple grapple with two dogs the size of bisons and try to pry them into one of those really small, energy efficient vehicles that run on used kitchen grease, and which sported many Biden bumper stickers. I told Ruth my new Plan B, which was to go to the edge of Richmond and then get a room for the night.

She thought that was a good idea, and we left only to find the restrooms were at a rest area, which was about 50 feet down the interstate, causing me to go 0-80 and then 80-0 in those 50 feet. Again, that provoked a really bad stare from Ruth. They were port-o-lets. The clean, nice restrooms were padlocked. In some bureaucratic mind, I am sure it makes perfect sense to shut down the nice restrooms and leave the public – already scared to death in a pandemic — to have to go to very unclean port-o-lets with doors that have to be touched to be opened and closed and levers to be pulled so 18 people don’t pull the door open with 85 more people outside staring, not to say that happened to me at all but telling it for a friend.

The port-o-lets were for both genders and that was not pleasant at all. I could do a whole column about the cleanliness of men’s rooms compared to women’s rooms, but I will not do it here. Ruth refused to go, which shows one more time she has the most intelligence when compared to me.

Let me also say I take a water pill. That means I have to use the restroom about once every five seconds, which is not good in a pandemic without public restrooms, especially when traveling long distances or walking through Elizabethan flower gardens with all of their restrooms padlocked for our safety after drinking eight gallons of really good, strong coffee.

So, we made it to the northwest side of Richmond and rush hour was beginning. Ruth and I both saw signs for about 1,285 hotels/motels at the next exit. Cutting across three lanes of rush hour traffic without looking first, I made the exit.

It was the wrong exit.

We knew it was the wrong exit because there were condos, apartment buildings, eight lanes of heavy traffic and no commercial buildings in sight. To Ruth’s credit she laughed. I found a place to turn around. Unfortunately, it did not have a stop light. Thus, I went across many more lanes of traffic, turning left in rush hour without really looking well or at all.

A mere half hour later we were back on the interstate, having to get over where there was no room because I was in an exit-only lane only to have Ruth point out all the nice hotels/motels on the exit where the exit-only lane was leading to.

We both laughed this time.

As we careened from one lane to another in search of where I-64 was going to next through downtown Richmond, we made it out on the other side.

“That really was not that bad,” I said.

Ruth agreed.

Then, we saw a sign for Virginia Beach, and I think it said 86 miles. I did the math in my head, and by driving at the speed of traffic, 110, we should be there by 5:30 p.m. It would still be light. We could get a room on the beach and spend some leisure time on the beach before and/or after a nice supper. Again, Ruth agreed.

After stopping at two rest areas, which actually had indoor restrooms, we made it to Norfolk, and I discovered why the people warned about the Norfolk traffic. There were six lanes going in the same direction and the seventh lane was the emergency stopping lane. I kid you not. They had big signs saying the emergency stopping lane was wide open, “go real fast,” the signs said. And we all did.

Just to stay on the same interstate, the traffic planners – Ruth said they were male, and I have learned not to disagree – have people taking exits on the right only to have to go on another exit to the left 12 inches from where the first exit was and all that during rush hour. And that was just about every turn there was.

One would think there would be more signs saying VIRGINIA BEACH (THE BEACHES AND NOT THE CITY) TURN HERE OR TURN THERE OR GO STRAIGHT HERE.

But no.

Ruth and I talked about the lack of signage during our ensuing wanderings, which came close to the amount of time the Jewish people spent looking for the land of milk and honey. And ours may have been much more dangerous.

We were so lost at one point we were going into an underwater tunnel, and I thought we were going into Maryland from Virginia. I was kind of happy at that point because I told Ruth, who hates seafood, if we ended up in Maryland, it was God telling me to go to a seafood restaurant and order up crab cakes.

In 1974, on a trip with my parents, I ate crab cakes in Maryland. And to this day I have not tasted anything as good as those crab cakes.

But, alas, when we came out of the bridge, we were still lost in Virginia. Just think of the next 90 minutes being more of the same – without an underwater bridge — until I came to that Lowes and turned in to the parking lot in desperation. Neither Ruth nor I slept well the night before in Lewisburg, West Virginia, so we were both very tired, hungry, and of course, I had to go to the restroom.

Brian, remember Brian, unfortunately, was much like my brother-in-law John. I love John. He is probably the nicest person I know. He would and has done everything and anything I have asked him to do. One thing John cannot do is tell directions. While telling directions, John thinks of a better way until he has three versions of directions going at the same time. It just adds to general confusion.

That was Brian in a nutshell. He started telling me one way, and then, as if he were having a very intense internal conversation only he could hear, he would tap a pen on a tooth and say things like “no, this would be the better way to go.” And then he would start telling me that way only to stop in midspeak and have the same sort of teeth-tapping internal conversation and start again. He had his smart phone out for some reason, but then went in search of a paper to go with his pen. He started to draw a map.

I wanted to cry. I might have. He was talking in this manner “You go straight until you see these buildings and then you have to go around them right or left, whichever way you want to go.”

He saw my confusion. “You don’t understand do you?” he asked.

My 13-year-old self had many, many things to say to that also, but I finally asked him, “if you were me, which way would you go?”

And he told me a fourth way, which was going back the way we had been going and going on the entrance ramp our Garmin told me to do. One thing about our Garmin is it is very old. It will not update. And with its age, it is both cranky and conniving. It waits to tell us to turn when we are past the turn or it tells us to turn the wrong way.

It was late at the last turn, and I didn’t believe it when it told me something because it had been wrong several times in a row. However, Brian gave me the wrong number to the Interstate, the wrong number to the exit ramp and the wrong direction to turn.

The Garmin got it right.

Still in tears and needing a rest area because I forgot to go to the restroom in Lowe’s, we got on I-264 east.

As Brian had said during one of his many dialogues with his inside voice, I-64 – the wrong interstate — he had said west – would end at the Atlantic Ocean. I get turned around, but I do have an idea the Atlantic is to the east of the landward side of Virginia. Of course, I did not tell Brian and whatever friend or friends he had running around in his brain.

We came to the end of the street that at one time had been I-264 and there before us was a huge Holiday Inn. I felt a bit like Moses at that point. I pulled across four lanes of traffic and slid sideways into a parking space. A very disinterested female, of that generation of disinterested young people, got me a room on the ocean side, and Ruth and I were able to lay our heads to rest after first visiting the hotel’s restaurant, which was at 30 or 40 percent capacity. The waiter really did not know as he was confused on what stage of re-entry Virginia was in at that moment. He did say their restrooms were finally open.

I was glad.