My first real adventure out of rural Kansas, alone, was going to Washington DC for my new duty assignment in the Air Force. I drove twenty-four hours straight then spent the day sleeping in Pennsylvania. I woke up at dusk and headed into DC for the first time. I as I got near DC I saw a sight similar to this picture. A line of cars as far as the eye could see. My first and, really only, thought was "Hmm, I wonder if a ballgame just let out." I was barely 18 and my only experience with this sort of traffic came at the end of a major league baseball game in Kansas City.
I worked my way through the traffic, white knuckled until I found the post and eventually parked my car in the garage beneath my barracks. There it sat for months as I soon discovered that it wasn't a ballgame after all, it was just a Tuesday.