Ready for more? Numb from the excitement of New York City, it was hard to solider on…but, we did. With my interest in bridges, I marveled at some of the engineering that went into some of these in the East. Here we crossed the Delaware Canal Bridge in Delaware. This is the first major concrete segmental cable-bridge built in the northeast. This holds the record for the longest concrete span of 750 feet.
Into Maryland.
And finally, Washington D.C. We dropped off the bags in our hotel and then headed for the National Mall where lies many of the country’s greatest memorials. Occupying about 146 acres, the National Mall is visited by about 24 million visitors a year. Here’s an aerial from wiki:
The memorials are spread out, and we were pressed for time before the sun set. So, we opted to rent a few bikes. First stop, Washington Monument. This is the tallest stone structure in the world at 555 feet.
National Wold War II Memorial:
And no visit to ‘D.C. is complete without a spy shot of the White House!
Into the late evening we still rode around on the pristine pathways.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was our last stop for the night. Chinese takeout, then back to the hotel.
The next day, it was a great pleasure to meet editor-in-cheif, Sofyan Bey from the “2theRedline” team. 2theRedline is an auto review channel on YouTube which features videos of many late-model vehicles complete with brief model history, test drives and general powertrain specs.
Sofyan is a proud owner of a 2013 Acura ILX 2.4L 6-speed. As you can imagine, we had to get the TL and ILX together for a few photo ops.
Sofyan was generous enough to do a review on my TL. This is the first TL 6-speed Sofyan has driven and the first ever for the Channel.
Here’s Sofyan as he sets up his Go-Pro cameras.
After the cameras were mounted on his ILX, we set off to have lunch. Sofyan led the way as Jouhl and I followed. In the meantime, the TL was being recorded in action.
Lunch was at Cafe Rio. I highly recommend it
After lunch, I handed the keys over to Sofyan, and he worked his magic for the final stage of the review. Here’s the end result complete with splattered flies and road grime:
Last stop, a photo op with Rob’s 2012 Honda Civic Si–One of Sofyan’s friends.
Rob did a masterful job of putting on an Si coupe front end and giving the suspension a moderate lowering. Looks much more aggressive!
From there, we parted ways. No time to waste on our end, back on the road again. Several miles down the road, we passed by, “Mechanicsville.” This has to be on the top of my list of most amusing town names.
Or maybe, “Tysons Corner.” I know my friend, Tyson will get a kick out of that.
Our stop for the night was Virginia Beach, VA. (That will be on my next post) On the way, we were going to cross something special: The Chesapeak Bay Bridge Tunnel. This is something I’ve been wanting to see for a long time! This structure is 17 miles long from shore to shore and it’s a fixed link from the Chesapeake Bay to Eastern Shore of Virginia. This is one of the world’s largest bridge-tunnel complexes (one out of ten). There are two 1-mile tunnels, two bridges, and nearly 2 miles of causeway (raised sections). Here are a few aerial shots from Google. The breaks in the road are the tunnels underwater.
Those two tunnels allow for marine traffic to cross the bay uninterrupted. Let’s see how the bridge is!
Here it is in the distance as we were approaching.
As I picked up speed, the moderately worn Michelin tires started to make their subtle hum on the concrete surface.
Before entering the tunnel, there’s a restaurant and gift shop pull off. Wasn’t the best location for a photo op, but it was better than nothing.
At this point, you get to cross over the road and see the entrance to the first tunnel.
View from the restaurant.
Here we go underwater!
The first exit.
With speed limits at 55MPH, it only takes an easy 15 mins the cross the entire bridge. As I’m not accustomed to the narrow lanes in tunnels, 55MPH can be quite frightening when meeting on-coming traffic. Thankfully, we made it to the other shore without mishap…then I turned around and drove it again!
That’s all for this post. Stay tuned for the next and final post coming up…
Pawela's Garage 