Yesterday, we went to PA to attend the memorial service for our friend’s father. For those of you unfamiliar with roads in Virginia, the most direct route for us to take to the town in PA was north on I-95 and then cut over on I-495 (the Capital Beltway) and then pick up some other roads to get to PA. This area of I-95 and I-495 is known as the “mixing bowl” and is currently undergoing an 8-year project to make it better. It is scheduled to be finished in 2007. Personally, it seems like this project has been going on my whole adult life…kind of like the Big Dig for those people in the Boston area. Seriously, there’s a whole population of teens in the Boston area who never knew life before the Big Dig. Scary, isn’t it? I digress.
The memorial service started at 1:30. We planned to get there around 12:30 so we wouldn’t be late like we were for another memorial service we went to this summer. We rolled up in front of the church at 1:15. The better-half tied his tie in the car and then we quickly walked into the church and found a seat in the back. Thankfully, we weren’t the last row so there were actually people who came in after us. But, they all live in PA and were probably walking over to the church from their houses.
Why were we nearly late? Because a SWIMMING POOL was in our way on the freaking highway. It took up 2 lanes of traffic in the “mixing bowl” area in the middle of the morning. Let me say that again, A SWIMMING POOL was in our way. It took us an hour to get past that hulking monstrosity. Why is it cheaper to extrude fiberglass in some other state and then haul a SWIMMING POOL down the road on a flat-bed tractor trailer instead of digging a hole and building a SWIMMING POOL on site? I’m not talking a pool the size of a hot tub…you could have dived into one end of this SWIMMING POOL on wheels.
I’m glad we went to the memorial service. I think our friend and his family appreciated it. I didn’t know my friend’s father very well but I was happy to hear the pastor tell stories that matched up with the image I have of his father in my head. A good man did just die. It’s hard to say that anymore.