A long drive, a near miss, and a lot of boxes...

So, last weekend was a lot of driving. First, the 520 miles from Worcester, MA to Richmond, VA. The traffic at the New Jersey Turnpike and Northern Virginia was really bad. The whole drive took me about 12 hours. And secondly, the 630 turned 700 miles from Richmond, VA to Ann Arbor, MI. In order to avoid the rush-hour traffic, I avoided the shorter route (through Washington DC) and chose the longer, but less traffic and more scenic route (through West Virginia). It took me about 11.25 hours for the drive.

So, more than 1200 miles of driving within 60 hours. That's pretty hardcore huh!

A near miss. On the way back from Richmond to Ann Arbor, at about 4pm, turning onto the Ohio Turnpike on I-77 North, when I was turning on a ramp onto the turnpike, at about 35-40miles / hour, I had an aquaplaning and lost control of steering the car, and ended up skidding and made a 180 degree turn. Fortunately, I was calm enough to not to apply brake or anything. And even more fortunate was there wasn't any car behind me, and there's a huge patch of pebble-road where I stopped after the spin. It was a close call.

And a lot of boxes. As I drove down to Richmond, VA to visit my cousin, Jessica and her family, who just moved there from Wilmington, Delaware. There were a lot of boxes. How many boxes would you consider as a lot? How about 400 boxes (furnitures not included). They had an army of movers who just started packing and moving their stuff on Monday. (It took them 2 days to pack, 1 day to load, 2 days to transfer and unload.) So, they were busy unpacking when I arrived on Saturday evening. And these professional movers did wrap all the stuff nicely, and with a lot of paper.
Look at the stack of paper. By the end of the second day, it was piled higher than 5 feet tall. After witnessing this scale of moving, I didn't dare to utter a word about my moving. I mean, I had about 10 boxes of stuff and that's it.

Also, from the meals I had around Richmond, I like the place already. For Saturday dinner, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant, and the Pho was amazing. It was really really good. For Sunday lunch, we went to an Italian restaurant, where I had Capellini with eggplant parmesan. It was great too. And for dinner, we went to another Vietnamese restaurant, where I had assortments of BBQ/grill. And, I too had quite some wine with Jessica, Tomas and their his father, Jose. We had champagne too. Great times to have with family.A lot of hard work was put into decorating this tray.

So, I unloaded all the stuff from my car, and also moved all the stuff I had in the storage into my apartment. I unpacked most of the boxes, left with the luggage bags of clothing to be put away. Tomorrow, I still need to make a trip to IKEA to get all the stuff before I can get my cooking going.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend, topping off an incredible summer, just great! And having all that, it's only normal (at least for me) to think about what's next? When will all these great things end? Whatever it is, I'm gonna be positive and have my fun.