I-95: the level of hell Dante forgot

So.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. In common parlance: abandon all hope, ye who enter here, for this is a tale of a perilous journey that begins in the city of New York, travels through the rings of the inferno such as the "NJ Turnpike" and "rest stops", hits purgatorio of "bad movies" and "smelly companions" and finally hits the paradiso of a cab waiting at 11th and G.

Sigh.

I knew the trip back wouldn't be easy. Seriously. I did. Wednesday's trip was a mass of traffic, mitigated only by the snacks I brought, the conversations with Michael's friend from HS, the viewing of Ratatouille, and the promise of pizza (ehem, not realized) once I got to my parents' house. In addition, Adriana had told me horror tales from her undergrad years in VA when she would return on Sunday and spend all day on the highway.

And yet?

Somehow I thought we might have solved it by taking a late bus. Somehow I thought we'd be different. I thought this, even though at 3:30 when I googled the traffic into the Lincoln Tunnel (cause we had to get into the city to get out of it) and it wasn't just red, it was red and black. I thought it even as Grace and I sat on the NJTransit bus into the city, in a sea of red lights that moved at 5mph so that even though we caught a bus an hour and a half before our next bus, that should have gotten us to our destination with an hour, we got there 15 minutes before it was supposed to depart (or, the time we were supposed to be boarding). I thought it was we ran through the rain because the cab line outside Port Authority was so long, and the traffic on 8th Ave so bad, and the subway so fraught with tension, that running the 11 blocks was our surest bet. I thought it as we sat among hundreds - literally, hundreds - of college kids and 20somethings, interspersed with the occasional slightly older and slightly younger, all trying to get on buses to DC and Baltimore and Philly and Boston, as cops wandered through the throngs wary of the slightest sign of mass revolt. I thought it as we got checked in, and then fought tooth and nail to get our bags on the luggage rack, and found seats, and then sat there as people from our scheduled bus boarded the next bus because the bus before ours had been overbooked so all the people from THAT bus had taken OUR bus.

Obviously? I was wrong.

And while I know there are worse things in life (see below) than hanging out on I-95 for hours and hours (and hours and hours), it didn't feel that way last night. We were stuck in New Jersey (even my personal love for the jerz was stretched) for fourish hours, a trip that should take less than 2. During this time we'd sit, unmoving, for 10 minutes as our fellow passengers tried to ascertain what was holding us up and Grace and I tried to ascertain who was intermittenly smoking pot and eating really really stinky food. Suddenly, we'd move - FAST! And for a glorious 1.2 minutes, we'd think we were saved. And then parking lot, di nuovo.

Flaming tombs ain't got NOTHING on the NJ Turnpike.

We tantalizingly stopped at two different rest stops, which, for all their "what's wrong with America-ness" would have broken up the tortuous monotony nicely, or at LEAST given Grace and I some food on our journey that began at 3:45pm and ended somewhere around 1am with no nourishment other than a Kit Kat. But no. We sat there once so our bus driver could change, and once so that we could get gas. Still stuck on the bus, trying to figure out what the smell was. Still super duper hungry.

I coulda used a traitor to chew on.

Anyway, at some point we started to move a bit, and while we felt released from Satan's grip. But then someone on the first level of our bus decided that those first hours had been too easy on us, and started playing movies.

Dance movies.

Now, don't get me wrong. The original Shall We Dance is a lovely film, and the remake isn't bad (I mean, Richard Gere can be adorable, seriously). Strictly Ballroom is pure genius, and while Take the Lead isn't the best thing ever, let's be honest - I love the real life story behind the movie (PLUS, Rufio from Hook is in it, all grown up!!). And that real story is why I cry like a baby - like a BABY - everytime I see Mad Hot Ballroom.

I mean, even more than usual.

But the first movie - of TWO about "dance", as pot smoker suspect 1 put it - was Dance With Me, a movie starring the repressible Vanessa Williams gyrating her hips more than she probably did before she had to resign her title as Miss America (giving it to an African-Italian-American from JERSEY) in a manner that made me want to cry in an entirely different way. For two hours I sat through this crappy movie (occasionally trying to sleep and less occasionally trying to eavesdrop on the guy behind me who was having a FASCINATING conversation with his mother about his father and his father's wife who had only recently found out her husband had an illegimate son from the 1980s). Finally it was over - penance had been paid for mocking Vanessa Williams.

And then came on the second movie.

To be fair, it was the Richard Gere Shall We Dance, which as I say above, I enjoy in general. But cmon. More ballroom? SERIOUSLY? What fan of Dancing with the Stars did I offend in a previous life?!

Anyway.

Hours later, as we pulled into DC, beaten, broken, starving, and uncontrollably tapping out a rumba with our toes, we knew this time we had a fight ahead of us. Two buses emptying themselves at 1am in a city whose Metro doesn't run past midnight (wtf.) was not going to be an easy thing. Add to that the luggage situation we had already battled, our weakened state from all the energy we didn't have spent on tap tap tapping, and having to ward off the fumes of the pot smokers, and we thought we were screwed. However, for the second time that night I was thankfully wrong.

Well, "night". It was TECHNICALLY the next morning.

Because of a few good Samaritans, our luggage was extricated without much trouble. We marched off to a corner and yeah, didn't get the first cab that was came by, but got one very quickly. 10 minutes and $12 (five of which we had FOUND) we were at Grace's house. Two minutes later, we had pita sandwiches at our disposal. 1 minute after than, we were tucked into bed. And so, "onde, se 'l mio disir dee aver fine, in questo miro e angelico templo". In common parlance: pita sandwiches and beds after a trip like that are miraculous angelic temples.

Or something like that.

Lastly, a slightly more serious note. While I joke about the hell of sitting on I-95 for hours, this weekend was truly hellish and heartbreaking for so many different people. For those of you who pray, please pray for the families of those killed in Mumbai. Also, those affected by the Black Friday deaths in Walmart and Toys R Us (I am not equating the two. I am just saying that death be not proud, and neither should we). For those of you who do not pray, I know you are hoping like I am that one day we live in a world where such tragedies no longer occur. I leave you with the immortal words of Victor Lazlo. "Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win."