Miles of Rope

There's something wonderful about being alone on the shore of the Potomac at six A.M. Just me and the Mount Vernon guard dog, a skittish border collie, watching the mist rise off the river and thinking about the day's work, your tools about to dig into earth that George Washington once owned and worked. Then the rest of the crew arrives, along with the micromanaging production designer, and all romantic thoughts disappear.

We're rebuilding George Washington's camp at Valley Forge, and recreating a field hospital out of barns and outbuildings. Up the road they're filming scenes of the French and Indian wars, including the untimely death of General Braddock. We're pitching tents, digging fire pits, erecting flagpoles, and stretching tarps across handmade wooden poles. We're strictly forbidden from using any kind of permanent fasteners on the Mt Vernon buildings, so we're using rope to build just about everything. Our micromanaging production designer insists on going on every product run personally, usually coming back with a single 150' package of manilla rope -- which we use in about ten minutes. Eventually he figures out that it's cheaper to buy LOTS of rope and risk spending an extra $10 on materials than to pay six guys union scale to wait around for him to return.

Oh, the project -- we're making an 18 minute film, "George Washington: Man of Decision," which will run at the new Mt Vernon visitor's center... some day. It's rewarding to think that long after my other films (Wedding Crashers, Syriana, etc) are largely forgotten and are but Deep Tracks in Netflix's rotation, this little production will be run several times a day for bored, field-tripping youngsters.

It rains. It's hot one day, cold the next. It's perhaps as hard as I've ever physically worked on a set, and I'm utterly filthy at the end of each day. My knee aches because someone (well, let's be upfront: The production designer!) is apparently unable to drive, and sends me flying off the back of a pickup truck when he slams on the brakes for absolutely no discernable reason. But the work feels good, and the place looks fantastic. In a couple days, the shooting crew will be here, and there will be the mad dash of last-minute set dressing and Splashing of Fake Blood.

But for now, the nameless Border Collie and I are enjoying a few peaceful minutes on the banks of the Potomac; I'm thinking about who was standing on this spot 230 years ago, and he's thinking how good my bacon-egg-chese sandwich smells.

Ghost Roads

I've always been fascinated by abandoned infrastructure. The abandoned subway stations in New York and London, for instance. What's even more interesting is infrastructure that never got used, especially roads. I think this is a manifestation of my slack-jawed looks from the back of my Dad's Buick as we drove to New York state -- a giant, towering exit ramp that ended in a straight line, looming over I95 in Baltimore. It looked post-Apocalyptic. I wanted to know the story behind it.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm driving to Ocean City (Maryland) to hang with some friends. On Maryland 90, just west of the bay, there was this full interchange that didn't go anywhere. A cloverleaf to nowhere, no road, just ramps that appeared to have never been used. I wanted to know the story behind it.

Not far from my house, there is a huge interchange where I-95 meets the DC Beltway. 95 was originally planned to go into and through Washington, and meet up with what is now I395 at New York Ave. NIMBYs killed it in the early 70s, but not before Maryland built the entire interchange, as seen here.



Today the SHA parks equipment on the completed roadbed, and, up close, you can just make out the faded lane markers.

Here is a shot of the old towering ramp I mentioned earlier. It's where I70 would have connected with I95 in Baltimore. The big ramp was demolished years ago, but some stubs still remain. In this shot, 95 runs horizontally across the frame.



Here's another shot of I70 in Baltimore, this is where it ends after covering 2,700 miles from Utah. It came up a couple miles short, here seen just east of the Baltimore Beltway.



Here's a chunk of I70 that was built, but never connected with the segment shown earlier. It's just west of downtown Baltimore, a strange-looking depressed freeway with a bunch of overpasses, that abruptly ends; in the photo, the lanes on the left have never seen traffic, and on the leftmost side, the right-of-way has been turned into a parking lot.



Getting away from DC-Baltimore for a second, here's an interchange that would have taken 95 into Boston, at the intersection of I-93.



And finally, our tour ends with the mysterious interchange near Ocean City. This one -- well, I still have no story for it. Perhaps some gracious roadgeek could help.