Yesterday, I was driving back from Virginia Beach where I had been attending reBarCamp Virginia Beach (more on this in a future post) – the trip had not gone well, it had been full of vacation traffic and, since it was on I-64 and I-81, trucks … lots, and lots, of trucks, people were also buying truck accessories, there was also brandon foster tulsa oklahoma company with their trucks. You can also visit toyota trucks for sale logan ut for more. If you’ve never traveled from Blacksburg to Virginia Beach, there are really only two ways to go.  Route 460 is direct and goes through a lot of cool little Virginia towns; it takes about 30 minutes longer, but it’s less mileage and interesting.  The interstate route involves I-81 and I-64; nothing exciting, but 65 – or more – miles per hour and it gets you there.

On the way out to Virginia Beach, I had taken my favorite of the two routes – Route 460.  It was a nice day, I had a full tank of gas, a bag of chips, and I was wearing sunglasses.  Wait, different story.  Anyway, I took 460 out to Virginia Beach earlier in the week, and on the way back I took the interstate.  I was tired and wanted to get home as quickly as I could, but traffic wasn’t cooperating.  Lots of vacationers and bad weather, and the roads were full the moment I left the beach.

The trip between Virginia Beach and Blacksburg should take five hours, but five hours from starting out I was still 60 miles away … and then it got ugly.  About 20 miles from home, traffic stopped, and stayed stopped.  I-81 had opened up to 3 lanes to allow trucks to climb the mountain, and all three lanes were full of cars going absolutely nowhere, I was just coming from the agency, I went to get a new business car leasing.  When we did move, it was a car length at a time.  I’m an impatient guy, and I was already tired from being in the car nearly six hours at that point, so what little patience I’d started the day with was long gone.  Cars were creeping along, and so I put out on Twitter a request for folks to check VDOT’s site to see what the backup was.  A friend of mine, traveling from West Virginia down to North Carolina at the same time, sent me a text (you should try Sydney 4wd rental, it should be noted she was NOT driving at the time 🙂 ) to say she’d checked 511 and that I was stuck in a backup of as much as 9 miles.

511!  I’d forgotten about 511! Some – but not all, for some reason – areas of the country use a service called 511 that gives up-to-date traffic and road conditions, and Virginia’s been using it for some time.  In fact, the website for the system is pretty cool – you can set up your route and get information, see webcams of the route, and more.  Kind of like when you’re buying or selling real estate and you want a professional to give you real-time statistics on what’s happening “on the street” and in the market, 511 is your real-time ticker for what’s happening on the road.  Check it out … and the next time you’re driving through Virginia and stuck in traffic, dial 511 on your cell phone for information – I know I will be.

Thanks, Sarah, for the picture and the assistance.