The Bay Bridge Blues

It started about a year ago, shortly after the news of a night-time car accident that sent a woman and her car over the side of the bridge and into the waters of the Chesapeake below. 

I developed a phobia about driving over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge that links the Eastern shore of Maryland and Delaware Beaches to the North with the urban Western shore and the D.C. metro area.

I can handle just about any bridge you throw at me with little complaint, but not this bridge.  And when I say it’s a phobia, that’s being generous.  My heart races, my adrenalin surges, and my fingers lock around the steering wheel.  Holding my head in locked position as well (fear of heights, doncha know), it takes all of my will and concentration on the car directly in front of me to get me across.

I also talk to myself and sometimes shout obscenities as I drive the bridge’s 4.3 mile length that is considered one of the scariest in the world “because of its height, narrowness of the spans, low guardrails and the frequency of high winds.” (I must duly acknowledge Wikipedia for this description, but I knew it all intuitively based on the level of anxiety experienced in transit.)

Last weekend, I had to traverse the bridge twice in order to retrieve my daughter and her friend from their beautiful YMCA summer camp on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.  (I won’t offer a geography lesson, but to get to the Eastern Shore of Virginia from Northern Virginia in the shortest amount of time, you have to go up and over then down from the Eastern Shore of Maryland -- a real hike that requires the Bay Bridge route.)  Because I had two kids in the car, I tried to keep the panic relatively low-key – muttering to myself rather than, say, shouting out the f-bomb – all the while praying for god to be my co-pilot. 

Once we climb to the top of the bridge span and begin our descent to the “other side,” I start to relax a little, confident that I will live another day.  And so it was last weekend, although we were almost killed by a big black Chrysler sedan that cut us off as lanes narrowed on Route 50 just outside of D.C. – well beyond the Bay Bridge – but that story is off topic today, so I won’t bore you with it.

Anyway, I’m starting to get anxious in advance of this week’s journey across that bloody awful bridge as we head north for some beach time.  I’m sweating already just thinking about it.

I wish I could say that writing this post was a way of exercising my demons but it really isn’t.  I know what lies ahead and there’s very little you can do to help me.  

Wait, I’m wrong about that.  Just say a little prayer.