The start of our Land Trip

The start of our Land Trip   …   Sunday 12th May 2013

It took us  couple of hours to finish up all the jobs we thought were needed to leave the boat for a month on the dock. When we first moved aboard we wondered if we might feel desperate to get off the boat after living in the relatively small space for 9 months. As it turns out we were actually quite sad to leave. We jumped in the rental car at about 11am and set out on the drive north towards Washington DC. We are spending the night in a motel about 50 miles south of the capital so that we can be well positioned to pick up my mum and sister from Dulles airport tomorrow. Todays drive was about 330 miles and took us over 6 hours. On our boat it would have taken more like 50 hours non-stop. I find it quite amusing that our average speed in the boat is somewhere between our walking (3mph) and bicycling (12mph) pace. We don't exactly burn up the miles! Anyway the drive itself wasn't particularly interesting. The most visually appealing sections were in North Carolina where the Department of Transport has set aside areas on the side of the motorway that are dedicated to growing wildflowers. At this time of year they were all blooming and we'd come across fields of the brightest orange, red and purples. Unfortunately my camera was in the trunk and it wouldn't have been easy to stop anyway. As we got further north the traffic got worse and worse and for the last 50 miles it seemed like bumper to bumper, stop and go all the way. We saw a number of minor shunts but nothing other than traffic volume to account for the delays. 

One quick aside - as we approached Fredericksburg it reminded us of Gloria's PhD project - working towards a total synthesis of Fredericamycin, a potent cytotoxic natural product with a fascinating structure, so called because it was first isolated by scientists at the National Cancer Institute labs in Fredericksburg. That all seems like a long time ago but brings back happy memories of when we first met.

Mike