“Can you pick us up at the airport on Sunday? Our flight lands around eight.”

“Probably. AM or PM?” “PM.” Pause for a second… “Which airport?” “Dulles.” “Sure.”

Baltimore-Washington International (BWI) is around 15 miles away. I’m familiar with it – easy in & out. Dulles? Not so much. It’s about an hour drive: Down to the top of the DC Beltway, counter-clockwise to the West, then out along the Dulles Toll Road – toll free – to the airport.

It’s dark and I’m unfamiliar with the layout. I get sucked into the terminal loop – an oval road that will let you go around and around for repeated passes in front of the terminals for arrivals or departures. The second time around. The exits for the paid parking lots were well marked; the directions to the “cell phone lot” were not as easy to spot. Still, I found my way out, maybe a mile away to the open lot.

It was a beautiful, cool, autumn night. The occassional drizzle cleared to allow me out of the car to stretch and walk about. It’d be around another 30-minutes before their plane landed and at least another hour before they cleared customs. That gave me some time with a podcast, watching the people come and go, a visit to some nasty port-a-potties, and a hello with the Uber & Lyft drivers hanging out nearby.

It was around another hour east driving the kids back to their apartment, then another half-hour heading back north to finish the circuit. And it was totally worth it, hearing the stories from their adventure :-)