Late for Billy Joel (Updated w/ Photos)

Posted June 21, 2008, 11:27 p.m.

Great concert . . . but we were late. No fault of our own though, since we left Richmond headed for Virginia Beach with plenty of time to spare (more than 1.5 hours earlier than should have been necessary).

First, we got caught in a brutal thunderstorm—hail and everything. That slowed us down, but not enough to make us late. Then, passing through Hampton, we approached the bridge-tunnel and traffic stopped. Not just slowed, but stopped (see the photo Melissa took of us dead-stop next to a sign that says, what else, “No Stopping”). We inched ahead a few feet at a time for well over an hour, eventually seeing a sign that helpfully informed us that a disabled car was in the tunnel and thus (inexplicably) the tunnel was closed. Way to operate a tunnel, guys. I don’t know whether to blame Virginia Beach for this idiocy or VDOT and the state legislature for their perennial failure to fund transportation.

We finally got through and parked past 8:30 for a show that started at 8:00 (and without getting our planned dinner) and took a small spot on the grass at the venue nearer to 9:00 after the long hike from the lot. The remainder of the show was great, despite fairly poor (last-choice) seats, but I’m pretty mad we missed almost half of it. Oh well. Virginia Beach will not likely be a place we travel to in the future for concerts, since their roads seem to be pretty unreliable. At the right you’ll see grainy, low-quality pictures (the second of which is artificially enhanced to make it show . . . anything) of Billy Joel on a big screen and a wacky crowd of people.

What are your experiences (if any) with Virginia Beach area roads? Should I give them another chance?

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

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Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.

In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.

I am the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same.

You don’t have real diversity when you have a group of people who look different and think alike.

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But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.

If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty, if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him.

I observed . . . that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And . . . the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Are we so much better than the people of other ages and of other countries, that the same allurements of power and greatness, which led them aside from their duty, will have no influence upon men in our country?

War is like fishing with a golden net; the loss risked is always greater than the catch can be.

My commandment is: Thou shall not stand idly by. . . . You must interfere. And that is . . . the motto of human rights.

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

The French codes are often difficult of comprehension, but they can be read by every one; nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.

‘Chance’ is nothing but an expression of human ignorance. We don’t know the reasons and causes and design of all things, because we are not God.

Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. On the lips of him who has understanding wisdom is found, but a rod is for the back of him who lacks sense.

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.