The Vintage Diplomat: The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel

Post by J

Sometimes, you just have to get out of town.

R and I met in the waning years of the Cold War at the Defense Language Institute while studying Eastern European languages. I was fresh out of basic training, while R was a seasoned soldier by then.

The day after our first "date" we were having brunch at Fifi's Cafe in Monterey, California. We didn't know each other very well, but we were really hitting it off. The conversation went something like this:

Me: So you grew up in New Jersey - that must have been interesting.

Him: Not really.

Me: I grew up in Wyoming, out in the country. It got boring there, too, but unlike Monterey at least we had four seasons.

Him: Do you ever miss the snow?

Me: Sometimes, I guess.

Him: Monterey's great and all, but this constant 68 degree weather is kind of getting to me. We should drive to the mountains to see the snow!

Me: ...

Him: Well, I have a truck, so we wouldn't worry about getting stuck. I can do all the driving because it's a stick shift.

Me: Um, did you hear me say I grew up in Wyoming? I've been driving a stick shift since I was 13.

Personally, I think this tidbit of information is what prompted R to fall in love with me.

And did we drive to Nevada, hundreds of miles away, just to see the snow after dating for less than 24 hours? Yes. Yes we did.

Lately our lives have been consumed with studying, and yesterday we finally decided we needed a day off. No computer, no Spanish textbooks, no laundry or grocery shopping.

Back when R was growing up, his family would travel to Florida in the summer to visit his grandparents. They'd stop and visit interesting places along the way, and yesterday he remembered he'd been impressed as an 8-year-old with the newly constructed Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. According to Wikipedia, "The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel is a 23-mile fixed link crossing at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in the U.S. state of Virginia. It connects the Delmarva Peninsula with Virginia Beach and the Hampton Roads metropolitan area." That's pretty much all the encouragement I needed.

Keep in mind it's over 200 miles to get to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel from here, and that's if you head down I-95 and connect to I-64 outside of Richmond. Once we had crossed the Bridge Tunnel and arrived on the Delmarva Peninsula, we typed our address into the GPS for the return trip, and the GPS promptly told us to make a U-turn and go back the way we came, because it was going to be a long haul back home if we continued on State Highway 13. We laughed, of course, and kept driving. For what seemed like a bazillion miles. We finally made it back home around 10:00 p.m. - about 11 hours after we began.

Read about the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel here.

Entering a portion of the bridge.

Tankers. The Bridge/Tunnel was created in order to allow vessels to travel unimpeded in and out of Chesapeake Bay.

Entering the first tunnel.

I see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel!

These are parts of the bridge. The space in between allows vessels to continue their journeys; the tunnel through which cars travel is underneath the water.

I actually like seagulls. Look at how cold they seem to be, tucking their heads back for shelter. Of course, Bob Seger's Against the Wind was stuck in my head for the rest of the day.