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The highway rest-stop looked like a polar refugee-camp. The plows had their hands full with I-95 and hadn?t been through here in several hours. There had to be fifty or more cars left haphazardly in the parking area, some partially blocking the road, many completely blanketed in snow. On the other side, the truck-parking area was also a snarl of trucks, most idling.We were on our way down to Florida for some January r-and-r and, being northerners, we had studded snow tires and four-wheel drive. So I wasn?t especially worried that we would get stuck. But one look at the Virginia Welcome Center made me shudder a little. The whole reason we decided to drive, instead of fly, was that the latest surge in COVID had caused hundreds of flights to be canceled in the last two weeks. We thought we were safer?and more likely to spend our vacation on the beach than stranded in a crowded airport?if we drove. But this storm had picked up speed and strength this morning and slammed into Virginia and Maryland as a ferocious blizzard. We had gone from bright sunshine on the New Jersey Turnpike, to gloomy flurries North of Baltimore, to some sort of ?snowmagedden? in D.C. There were cars in the ditches every mile or so and we even went around one truck that had jack-knifed and blocked one lane of the highway. We were traveling at a top-speed of thirty mph. On the radio, they said I-95 was a mess all the way to Richmond, at least. Now the rest-stop was mobbed with desperate travelers.?Should we risk it?? I asked Julia as we crept through the lot. ?That place must be lousy with COVID.?I could see she wasn?t happy with the crowd either. But she had fewer options than me. ?Yes. We better stop.? She said. ?At the rate we?re going on the highway, it might be three hours before we come to another place where I can pee.?I pulled into what might have been a parking spot and we masked up. The lobby was every bit as packed as it looked from outside. People were crowded around outlets so they could charge their phones. Every seat was taken and some people were huddled on the floor. Everyone was on their phone.The line to the women?s restroom snaked into the lobby and I suggested Julia just take her chances in the men?s room. One look at some of the characters emerging Ankara escort from there, though, and she said she would wait it out. When I saw the state of the men?s room, it was clear she had chosen wisely. The floors were filthy from all the slush that had been tracked in mingled with bits of toilet paper and paper towels. There was a line at each urinal of at least two guys and several were pacing the stalls waiting for an opening. It smelled exactly as you think it would.When I had finished and washed my hands (they were out of paper towels by then), I got out of there and went back to the lobby. Julia was still in line. In fact, I?m not sure she had moved five feet since I last saw her. I tried to give her a sympathetic smile, despite being masked.*Crowded as it was, I probably should have gone out and waited in the car. But I hated to leave her inside, so I moved to the least dense area I could find and leaned against a door marked ?Maintenance.? Another guy stood nearby, talking on his phone. He was younger than me?probably in his mid-thirties, and he shivered a little as he talked. Under his overcoat, I could see he was wearing a suit. But his dark hair was dripping with snow-melt and snow still clung to the top of his loafers and in the hem of his pants. He was soaked from the knees down.I nodded and went back to my phone. I was trying to find a hotel in Richmond. We had hoped to get all the way to North Carolina for this leg of the trip, but with ninety miles of ?snowmagedden? still to get through, North Carolina seemed like a longshot. I wasn?t having much luck. Even the Super 8s and Motel 6s were booked in the Richmond metro area.I looked over to the queue for the ladies room and saw that Julia had moved ahead five more feet. At this rate, she would be only another twenty minutes. Only twenty minutes.*?Having fun?? I texted her.?So much fun. |-(??trying to find hotel in Richmond no luck yet.??Shit?look further south???Trying???Excuse me,? I looked up and the man had stepped a little closer. ?You dropped your glove.?I knelt and retrieved it. Looking him up and down again, he appeared truly miserable. ?Thanks. Looks like you had a rough time getting here.?He nodded and looked around in Ankara escort bayan disbelief. ?I passed by here and almost pulled in, then thought it was safer to stay on the road. Just a half mile past here I spun into the ditch. Waited in the car for an hour, then decided to get out and walk back here.??That sounds dangerous.??Yep, it was dumb. I thought for sure if I didn?t get creamed by a truck, I would be the cause of someone else?s wreck. But I just couldn?t stand the thought of being buried in my car out there.??Bad as this is, it?s better than that.?My phone vibrated. ?Who are you talking to??I leaned around him to make eye contact with Julia. ?none of yr beeswax. guy trying to sell me ?good COVID.? go pee so we can get out of here ;-)??Sorry, that?s my wife. She?s stuck in line for the bathroom.?He turned and looked. Julia gave a short wave. He turned back and smiled (I think?mask). ?You guys traveling out or coming home??I told him we were coming from upstate New York, headed to Florida to get a break from winter. He said he was going to his brother-in-law?s funeral in Greensboro tomorrow. We chatted for another few minutes.*My phone jittered. ?he?s cute??Haha?I looked out the window where the snow was actually coming down even harder. ?It doesn?t look good for you,? I said. ?You got an ETA on your tow truck??*?AAA says it will be here anytime in the next?? He looked at his phone. ?Shit, they just changed it to the next four hours.??Do you believe that?? I could tell he didn?t really register my question. Like a lot of people in desperate situations, he had been clinging to the belief that it couldn?t get much worse. ?What?s your name?? I asked.?Sean,? he said, distracted. He looked so cold I suspected his teeth would start to chatter soon.*?Sean, we passed 50 cars, easy, in the ditch since D.C. and there?s more every minute. The tow trucks are going to prioritize cash over their reimbursements from AAA tonight. If you want to get out of that ditch, you need a bunch of cash and you need to call a tow service directly.?We both turned our heads to the little ATM machine by the bank of windows. It was mobbed.My phone buzzed. ?seriously tho nice butt and shoulders??You vaxxed?? He nodded Escort Ankara and looked at the crowd around the ATM. ?Well, I?m Reggie. My wife is Julia. If she ever gets done peeing, we?re taking our chances and getting out of here.? I said. ?We?re not going through Greensboro but we can drop you somewhere closer. You want a lift??( . )( . )When I texted Julia (she had finally made it into the bathroom, but had not gotten a stall, yet) she thought I was joking.*?I?m serious. He has a funeral tomorrow. We?ll drop him somewhere south of Richmond.?There was a long pause. Then, ?axe murder much?????She wants to know if you?re an axe murderer.?He laughed, ?No, I?ve never harmed an axe but I did say mean things to a shovel, once.??If you think he?s a creep when you get out here, say ?woohoo? and I?ll call it off.??I?m an attorney,? he said. ?Just got my first job.?I spoke slowly and pretended to type, ?Never mind. Lawyer. Will wait for axe murderer.?( . )( . )He and Julia hit it off pretty well when she finally got back to us. Sean said if we could drop him off at Rocky Mount or someplace nearby, he could get a ride with family from there. He stood trembling in the snow while we moved our stuff out of the back seat. I was at the back gate, putting our overnight bag in while Julia was gathering up a few odds and ends to clear the seat. I stuck my head around the corner. ?Hey Sean, you want to stow your laptop bag here, or??*Sean looked up embarrassed. He had clearly been checking out Julia?s ass as she gathered the last of our stuff out of the backseat. He blushed and looked away, hanging on to his bag and stammered something about the wind and the cold. I wasn?t angry. Julia was a bit of a flirt and even as I saw him looking, I had noticed that she was doing more ass-wiggling than was strictly necessary for her task.*Car rearranged, Sean got into the backseat and Julia and I buckled up in front and we set out again. Even in the half hour we had stopped, conditions had worsened. A plow had at least passed through the right lane in the last few minutes, but the snow (the heavy, wet stuff that sticks to the road and gives heart attacks to middle-aged guys with shovels) had already covered the roadway.*We had already agreed, if it seemed safe to do so, to stop at Sean?s car so he could get his suitcase. All of us were watching for it, a gray Volkswagen head-down in the ditch, not far from the rest area. But after two miles, we had not seen it. It was very possible that, between the storm and the snowplow, his car was simply buried.