My 'tragic' commute

I started a job with USPS Headquarters last October.....which is at L'enfant plaza downtown, two buildings over from where I worked for 15 years (the old DOT building.) I'd been a contractor with Postal for 2 1/2 year prior to being hired there. At that time, I worked in Chantilly, but came downtown to Headquarters 1-2 times a week. I actually preferred being downtown because that is literally a 5-10 minute drive (10 when there is traffic) from Clarendon where I live.

Working in Chantilly and a 35-45 minute drive out there was my excuse for buying the Solstice (convertible 2-seater.)

When I got the job here permanently, my commute went from 35-45 minutes to 5 minutes....but then there is parking. Garages around here cost about $300 a month, and taking the subway meant adding 30 minutes to the commute. However, I found out that you can park at East Potomac Park (Haines Point) for free if you get there early enough each day. After you park, you then have to walk over the Case bridge which goes over a waterway, then the fishmarket before coming out near Postal. It's normally a very pleasant, 20 minute walk and is one way that I get some exercise. Free parking and forced pleasant exercise is hard to beat.

Two nights ago, I left work at 4pm when my contact in Chantilly told me it was storming there....which normally means I have 20 minutes or more before it starts downtown. I was out the door in < 5 minutes, and it had just barely started to sprinkle. I had an umbrella and still thought I could miss the brunt of the storm, so I started jogging, slowly and carefully since I'm not in great shape, and jogged to the bridge. (about 1/5th of the entire distance to my car.) By this time the rain was coming down and I was hearing thunder in the distance, but I still thought I was fine. I stopped and walked up the ramp to get on the bridge. In that 1 minute getting up there, the rain turned torrential and the wind started to blow like crazy. I started to jog again, took two steps and pulled my calf muscle badly...DAMN! I limped another 40-50 feet and the wind picked up so much that I was soaked and could barely hang onto the umbrella....so I struggled for a couple of minutes trying to get it down and just live with being soaked the rest of the way. By this time the wind is so strong that I could barely move in a straight line. I manage to get the umbrella down (after almost abandoning it entirely) and am limping forward when suddenly the wind whips me around, then grabs my brand new $600 eyeglasses, rips them off my face and tosses them over the bridge! And this is a highway bridge so it is quite high. It happened so fast I didn't even have time to react, and could only watch helplessly.

Now at this point, I was not yet over the water, but was very close to it....and just below was a combination of about 7 different fish market roofs, water all around, a road, and part of the dock. And it was raining SO hard that I lost sight of the glasses after about 2 seconds...they blended into the rain (not to mention that I'm near sighted anyhow.) All I saw was their general direction. With the wind also whipping all over the place, they could've gone anywhere, or landed, THEN been blown anywhere.

At this point, I'm injured, absolutely drenched, have lost the only expensive pair of glasses I've ever owned and my first new pair in 10 years (and the only pair I've ever gotten lots of compliments on), am being whipped all over, can see lots of lightening and thunder, although not yet close, and was about 1/3 of the way to the car. I had to make a quick call....continue to the car so I can get home and dry, or go back to postal where I can sit like a drowned rat until the storm passes. Despite my fear of the storm, I continued limping towards my car....and discovered fairly quickly that I'd also ripped a fingernail halfway off when struggling with my umbrella.....so I'm injured twice.

That was the longest normally-20 minute walk ever. By the time I got to my car, I was almost hyperventilating from fear of being struck by lightning or flying trees. I couldn't move past a slow limp. I think I've been dryer coming directly out of the shower than I was from this rain. I toss the soaking back pack in the car and drive home with my sunglasses on (prescription) during a storm. Final injustice was that I got home and discovered that my backpack had run and there was blue ink all over my tan seats....so now my convertible has stained seats.

It was the commute-from-hell day. As I'm emptying my soaking backpack, I also see that my blackberry isn't working (it came back fine after drying out), my Ipod isn't working....still isn't, and my phone is drenched, but at least still working. Everything else was ruined.

So this stupid storm possibly cost me well over $1000 for new glasses and a new Ipod and whatever we need to do with the stained seats....not to mention 2 injuries. I was not a happy camper.

I had Sax rehearsal that night about 2 hours later after the storm had settled into a steady rain, and I left early so I could stop by the fish market below the bridge and see if there was any hope at all of recovering the glasses. No way.....the only way I could ever hope to find them would be to spot them from the bridge. I gave myself a .02% chance and essentially declared them lost and went to rehearsal.

My dear friend Chad also arrived early with me and listened to my whole saga of the day. He was SO sweet, sympathetic, and when I finished he correctly declared 'you need a hug!'. And Chad knows how to give a good hug (and is quite beautiful himself....good for a cheap thrill anytime!) So he made me feel so much more calm after I got it off my chest and got his hug.

And he listened to all that and gave me his time before even telling me his own very exciting news (his new Sax he'd just bought.) What a selfless, sweet thing to do! He'll probably never read this but regardless, thanks Chad.....I really needed you that night!

No the story doesn't quite end there (sorry.) The next day I parked in a garage near work that I use in bad weather, because of my injured leg. About 10am it occurred to me that I hadn't yet gone onto the bridge and looked over the edge just to see if by some miracle I could spot the glasses. This was my .02% chance, but I have this thing.....I never lose anything. Well, let's put it this way...I never misplace anything because I can always find it quickly.....ask George as I'm always finding his things he loses too. And when I do misplace things, I become very single-minded about finding it. So even though I knew there was almost no hope, I had to try anyhow.

So I limped back to the bridge....found the approximate spot where it happened (not sure at all I was actually IN the right spot) and started searching the roofs and ground below the bridge. Now this bridge is at least 5 stories to the ground. But I'm very methodical...so I spent 15 minutes looking everywhere....studying things on the ground where they might've been caught, looking over the roofs....everywhere. Nothing. I tried different angles, nothing. Finally I gave up, took 10 steps and looked again (I'm like a dog with a bone....). To my absolute shock, I spotted them on the roof of one of the buildings. I was about 90% certain it was glasses and 85% certain it was mine (who else throws glasses off a bridge?) So I went down to the fish market, found a manager who took me up on the roof.

There they were! Bent out of shape and missing a lens (which I only noticed later), but to my shock and amazement, back in my hands again after being thrown off a bridge.

It was a good thing I found them...I had been planning to simply buy another pair of the exact same glasses, but instead took them to Lens crafters to see if they could be salvaged. I found out that even though I got them in February, that model was no longer available at all, so the frames couldn't be fixed. Even though it was more than their 90 day policy, they replaced them for 50% of the cost. If I hadn't found the glasses, I would've been buying a whole new pair for full price. And since it was different, cheaper frames, it actually only cost me $135.

I'm still disappointed because I don't think I like these glasses as well, but I'm thankful that the whole saga didn't turn out worse than it could've.

My thought for the final 2/3 of that nightmare walk.....limping along as fast as I could move praying that I would not be struck by lightening....kept drifting to, 'how ironic that I find out George doe NOT have a brain tumor and won't leaving me alone in 6 months, only for me to be struck by lightening to leave George alone two days later.'

Although I'm really not very religious....I found myself praying for the 2nd time in the last week, and thanking him (or her) afterward.