Despite the downpour I got home at about a half-hour before we planned to leave, which meant, we had to hurry and get in the car right away because my mother wanted to leave as soon as possible. I held things up a little because I had to do some stuff before setting out --- setting the Tivo to record the series finale of Awake, buying the release of Coda 2 because it was half-price the day-of-publication --- and besides I wanted to see if I could remember to get a replacement hoodie. (I figured I'd need something in case it got cold after dark; it didn't get very cold, but the likelihood was there.)
My mother didn't think we'd have time to eat before the play --- we wouldn't --- so she figured we could go to Jersey Mike's and pick up sandwiches to eat on the way up. I figured she was joking a bit the first time she said we should do that, since I couldn't think of any time she'd ever been to Jersey Mike's. But she repeated the plan the day before and the morning of and finally I realized: she was really determined to get something at Jersey Mike's. I wonder if she's worrying about my incipient homesickness.
Yet all the way up we had the news radio with its reports on traffic every ten minutes, and each report had the traffic jam at the Lincoln Tunnel just a little bit longer. We estimated the jam --- from the point where flow of traffic stopped until we got done with the helix --- at 75 minutes; the radio was saying an hour, but possibly they have different estimates for how long the trip normally takes. It did mean we were wise to save the sandwiches for that late, since an hour-plus of stop and stop traffic is marginally better if you're busy eating through it instead.
Trivia: Though Admiral Nelson's HMS Victory is the oldest commissioned ship in the world, it has been in dry dock since 1922. The USS Constitution, launched 32 years later, is the oldest commissioned floating ship. Source: Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, And A Vast Ocean Of A Million Stories, Simon Winchester. (It makes me wonder what's the longest-in-drydock ship out there. Victory seems an obvious candidate but that doesn't mean it's so.)
Currently Reading: The River Where America Began: A Journey Along The James, Bob Deansh.