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In an attempt to tackle numerous birds with a single stone, my entire house packed up and hit the road, so that we could visit family, see some sights, and let the kids and the au pair see some things outside of our everyday life in Georgia.\u00a0 All of the driving necessary to hit all of our destinations was daunting, but with hopes that breaking up the trip with strategic stops, and having an iPad full of kids\u2019 movies and television shows to distract, it wasn\u2019t really that bad aside from the sheer time and boredom of the driving aspect which is I guess the burden of dads everywhere in the world when it comes to a famiry road trip, but honestly I can\u2019t complain.\u00a0 The kids were great on the entire long stretches of driving, and we didn\u2019t have to stop nearly as often as I feared we might have.<\/span><\/p>\n As for the trip itself, it was pretty good from the standpoint of getting to see a lot of family, and taking the kids and au pair into Washington DC to see some sights.\u00a0 Say what I might about DC as a former resident of the area, but places like their zoo and all the museums truly are top-notch.\u00a0 And the gentrification fairy certainly has done some work to the place since the last time I really went exploring or got lost in the city itself.<\/span><\/p>\n Pour one out for the husk that used to be Chinatown, which is apparently limited to like two restaurants and the big red arch that remains.\u00a0 It\u2019s also hilarious to see all the American and chain businesses that seem like they\u2019re required to have Chinese writing on their storefronts, so like you\u2019re seeing a Chipotle, with Chinese characters that probably say like Mexican food or something on it, since I doubt there\u2019s specific characters to describe a burrito.<\/span><\/p>\n I took our au pair to a Caps game since somehow she\u2019s inexplicably a hockey fan from South America and is apparently a New York Islanders fan, and since they were playing the Caps during our trip, it seemed like a layup to be able to gift something of a dream experience for her to be able to see the Islanders in person.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the Islanders took the L, but she got to witness the general apathy and low-excitement of the DC sports scene, where the entire crowd basically waiting for Alexander Ovechkin to do something, and the guy looking like he\u2019s playing hurt, based on the Undertaker-way he was coming into the game only at optimal scoring chances, and shooting from the same spot on the ice a few times before coming right back off.<\/span><\/p>\n In the past, I used to hold onto something of a kinship with the general area, and have a sense of pride of being a former Virginian.\u00a0 I liked knowing that I still knew the area very well and could get around without a map, take Metro without needing guidance, and generally co-exist with the denizens of the area without much complaint.\u00a0 But during the span of this trip, there were several instances of where I came to the realization that I\u2019m just not one of them anymore, and not just that, that I don\u2019t really like it up there very much, and often wondered how I was able to live up there for like 12 years.<\/span><\/p>\n People, in all of the DMV, are just so much more conceited and petty and just generally more selfish than what I\u2019m used to living in the South.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to explain, but there\u2019s always the smallest of micro-aggressions that I witness that remind me that I\u2019m not in the South anymore, whether it\u2019s holding doors open, being in the way on sidewalks or being at restaurants and being completely unwilling to offer up extra chairs or space.\u00a0 Like we\u2019re at a restaurant with six people, and there are only 4-tops left, but both adjacent tables have people with extra chairs; perhaps it was presumptuous to assume anyone would\u2019ve offered them up to my party, but down South, people are just a little friendlier and a little more aware of others, as opposed to the people around us who insisted their coats or their empty bag of takeout needed their extra chairs.<\/span><\/p>\n Mythical wife actually wants to ultimately end up back there, as she has lots of friends up in Maryland, but I have very little desire to move back up there, even if 75% of my general family lives up there.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like they\u2019d all automatically become ready babysitters, nor would I want to put that responsibility onto all of my cousins or my parents, and then I\u2019d be stuck up in DMV paying DMV land values and being subject to all the shitty people and worst of all, the motherfucking traffic.<\/span><\/p>\n Because that was absolutely one of the worst parts of the trips, was the aforementioned motherfucking traffic.\u00a0 It was bad when I lived up there with the seemingly endless construction of the I-495\/I-395\/I-95 interchange, but because VDOT apparently needs to always have a 20-year project on their docket at all times in order to justify their existence, they\u2019ve decided to turn I-495\/I-66\/Rt. 123 into their personal battlefield now, and getting stuck on a route in which I remember cruising back and forth through in the past just made me feel homicidal whenever I was caught in some standstill traffic.<\/span><\/p>\n In fact, while up in DMV, there was literally not a single instance where I got into my car and didn\u2019t get stuck in some catastrophic traffic jam.\u00a0 Going to Gaithersburg, traffic.\u00a0 Coming back from Gaithersburg, traffic.\u00a0 Going to my mom\u2019s place, traffic.\u00a0 Going to the nearest Metro station to pick up wife and au pair, traffic.\u00a0 After my family gathering, my house was going to head back to Richmond in order to shave an hour off of the big drive the following day, and one of my cousin\u2019s said that I shouldn\u2019t expect any traffic on the night of December 23rd<\/sup>, but naturally, there\u2019s some catastrophic traffic jam in fucking Quantico of all places, as if my time in the DMV area just had to get one last fuck you before I left.<\/span><\/p>\n People seem to think Atlanta traffic is, which it is, but I still think traffic up there is still way worse.\u00a0 Atlanta traffic is primarily aggressive drivers and poor infrastructure, but the DMV area has infrastructure and a reliable train system.\u00a0 Their traffic is on account of bad drivers who are all pussy-whipped into overly-safe-into-becoming-dangerous drivers by the Commonwealth\u2019s egregious ticket fines and the area\u2019s constant tampering with the road system buoyed by their $4B+ road budget.\u00a0 The overall result is me wanting to blow my brains out every time I got into the car, and most definitely not wanting to be in the area, as a residence especially.<\/span><\/p>\n But like I said, this trip was not entirely about me. \u00a0It\u2019s important that my kids meet and have exposure to my family, and it\u2019s important that our au pair gets to actually travel and see places and experience things outside of her daily routines, so if it means accomplishing those things, I\u2019ll take some traffic on the chin for the greater good.\u00a0 As much as I bemoaned the traffic and aggravations of DMV living, seeing how happy my kids are around their grandparents and extended family, and seeing how happy the au pair was when she got to see her favorite Islander players in person, I really can\u2019t ask for better gifts than those.\u00a0 This is why I often insist on getting nothing for the holidays, because some of the best things just aren\u2019t tangible things.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In an attempt to tackle numerous birds with a single stone, my entire house packed up and hit the road, so that we could visit family, see some sights, and let the kids and the au pair see some things outside of our everyday life in Georgia.\u00a0 All of the driving necessary to hit all … Continue reading The Holiday Famiry Road Trip<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[71,58,10,65,166],"class_list":["post-49737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-famiry","tag-sports","tag-traffic","tag-travel","tag-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49739,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49737\/revisions\/49739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}