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03/08/2004 Archived Entry: "Baltimore and Washington, DC"

Last Wednesday I spent the day in Baltimore, MD, where I took a corporate group to the Work Truck Show at the Convention Center. Very easy trip; the Convention Center has an excellent spot right at the main entrance for coaches to load/unload. My brother (and his family) and my dad live in Baltimore, and since my group didn't need me for about seven hours, I got to spend most of the day with my dad, niece and nephews.

Spring school trips have begun, and I spent the day Friday in Washington, DC with a school group. It was an eight coach move, and all eight of us parked at Union Station (photos above), one of my favorite parking spots anywhere. But the parking attendant Friday had most of us park in the area normally reserved for 40-foot coaches, and seven out of eight of us had 45-foot coaches, so it was extremely tight and made it difficult for other coaches to get in and out of the garage. Who knows why they do such things. Anyway, the temperature hit 70°F and several of us went for a nice, long walk around the Capitol building.

Despite the nice weather, there were a lot of accidents on the road -- I can't recall ever passing as many accidents on one day as we saw Friday -- I counted at least eight. One of them wasn't a big surprise; on the way back from DC, a pickup truck sped past our convoy, weaving in and out of heavy traffic in a very erratic and unsafe manner. One of the other drivers commented over the radio that we were likely to see him on the side of the road soon at that rate. Sure enough, less than two minutes after he made the comment, we came up on a three vehicle accident involving that same pickup truck. It looked like he cut off one vehicle too many, with damage both front and back of his truck.