Yesterday I flew to Providence, RI to attend a refresher course on TEI. The morning started without incident, until I was just about to leave. I had the radio on as I finished packing and I heard the tail end of a news announcement that they had closed I-64 East in Norfolk due to a sign falling onto the Interstate. This happend a couple of miles past the exit for the airport, so I thought I would be fine if I left a bit earlier than I originally planned.

When I got to Newport News, VDOT put the first warning signs up that I-64 was closed at Northampton and an alternative route should be used (that's all the sign said...feel sorry for any families traveling to the beach). I'm not that familiar with Norfolk, so as I passed the information office at the Naval terminal, I stopped in and got a map. The very nice women inside thanked me for the information, as no one had told them, and they didn't have a radio on.

I continued down I-64, and when I got to I-564, traffic was stopped...and I still had three miles to go to the airport exit. Thus started my wandering of Norfolk. I got into the wrong lane to go to Little Creek and ended up on the wrong side of town. I corrected my course, but not before a jaunt through the part of Norfolk where all the drive-by shootings happend this week. Once I got onto Military Highway, I noticed that everyone had the same idea I had about getting off of the interstate, so it took about an hour and a half to get from the exit to the airport (about 5 miles).

Fortunately the rest of the trip to Brown was uneventful.