I look at the world / and I notice, it's turning...

LISTENING TO: George Harrison - While My Guitar Gently Weeps


 
 
It's been nearly five years since I've been through Richmond, VA for any length of time, and I have to say I'm amazed at all the changes. It's not necessarily a city that I would think would change so much in that period of time, but the Richmond in my brain is a continual mash-up of rural independence meets industrial charm: still full of open spaces, but with a highway system that puts some of New Jersey's interstates to shame. 
The growth around where my aunt lives is incredible - as much as things in her neighborhood have kept their historical southern charm, our trip through the city was punctuated by a brand new Starbucks drive-thru and a pho restaurant being advertised outside Midlothian.
 
Every time I'm here I'm reminded of the time I spent here during the summer as a kid, and how I've always wanted to repeat a trip down here as an adult. My memories are a bit disjointed - it's like I've got the most important pieces bookmarked and they're surrounded by haze. It's always been a regret that I haven't been able to really replace those memories yet, and this trip just reminded me of that.

My mom was telling me that one of the very first times we drove to North Carolina after my grandparents moved there, we came through Richmond and then out through the Chesapeake Bay highway, which is the trip we repeated yesterday. At the time, there was a restaurant above the tunnels that I vaguely remember, but for some reason it's closed (I'll have to look that up later), but the entire time we were driving over the water, I was getting definite deja vu of that first trip, with pieces punching their way through my memory. The bridge itself is quite amazing, especially once you start actually thinking about it. It's much larger than you think it is, and the tunnels just sort of appear in the midst of everything like some sort of rollercoaster through the sea. Since both the restaurant and the fishing pier are closed there was no real place to stop, but that made it a more interesting part of the trip down to my grandfather's.


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