You've heard of storm chasers. Today the storm was chasing me. This monster ice storm was about to slam the whole east coast.

I began my day in Charlotte after a nice visit with Molly and Michael and their daughters Elly and Sarah. I worked with Molly in Cincinnati until she moved south. I left ahead of the storm intending to get to Washington before it arrived. It caught up to me first in Raleigh, where ice started falling around three. I got back ahead of it after leaving town, but every time I'd stop for gas it'd catch back up to me. Didja see that bad Steven King made-for-tv disaster The Langoliers starring that guy Bronson Pinchot from some even worse ABC show? Anyway, it felt like I was being chased up I-95 by something deadly.

"Fortunately there was a nice guy in a Pontiac."
This wasn't the only adventure today. Dad failed to tell me that the gas gauge on the car I'm borrowing doesn't go below 1/4 of a tank. With the gauge still showing 1/4 tank, I coasted to a stop by an exit ramp thinking I'd lucked out. The closest gas station was a mile and a half away. I ran. Fortunately there was a nice guy in a Pontiac who drove me back to the interstate.

By the way... this reaffirmed my hatred of urban sprawl. I ran out of gas near Durham. We're paving over farmland, building suburbs from scratch. Could we not put in a few crosswalks and walk/don't walk signs? We really are subsidizing the automobile industry with the way we design our cities.

"That created some tense moments."
AND... Ryan my friend from home who I was supposed to stay with tonight? Snowed in back home in Jonesville. Didn't make it to DC. That created some tense moments when I was racing toward DC, outrunning the storm with no idea of where I was gonna stay tonight. But my friend Julie from Syracuse was kind enough to let me stay with her. I was gonna get to see her tomorrow anyway... so it's very cool.

By the way... I won't get into details, but the pay phone calls I had to make to arrange accommodations for tonight were an adventure, too. Have you used a pay phone recently? I think I spent $15 on like five phone calls. At one point my credit card was involved.

Julie couldn't meet me till later in the evening, so when I got into town I walked around the White House for a while and got a pretty good picture. Everybody has one like it, but I was kinda proud of it.

More of DC tomorrow, then on to Pittsburgh Friday.