Monday, March 27, 2006

ROAD TRIP DIARY: The Cosmopolitan family spent the weekend in Our Nation's Capital catching up with old friends. The on-the-road part of the journey inspired a couple of questions that perhaps the good people of ALOTT5MA, with their deep knowledge of the NYC-DC corridor, can enlighten me on.

First, a specific question. How the heck is Havre de Grace (Maryland) pronounced? I can't imagine it gets the full French accent, which strikes me as a little excessive -- Av-ruh de Grrrrrahhhhhhce? But is it actually something like Have-da-Grace? Help me out here, folks.

This second one is more of a quandary for the ages: I-95 supposedly is a single road that takes one from Florida to Maine, right? So why is it that around Philadelphia, it is in fact two separate, distinct, and unconnected roads? Mr. Cosmo could not for the life of him figure out why we were not driving past Philadelphia en route to DC. "Because we're not on 95." "But we are on 95!" "No, Philadelphia's bit of 95 is a separate strip of road that is not connected to the rest of 95." (Fortunately for a couple of clubgoing Jersey girls who cornered us at a rest stop at the NJ/Delaware border trying to figure out why taking 95 South from Wherever-They-Live, North Jersey, hadn't gotten them to the Vine Street Expressway en route to Market Street, I as a native Philly girl was able to explain the problem and give them directions back to the land of the formerly-tall William Penn.) I have to think that zillions of people get lost due to this little rip in the space-time continuum.

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