Michelle Morgan has been waiting at a weigh station on U.S. Route 50-E in Annapolis, as instructed. She just passed the “Last Exit Before Toll,” sign, and there’s no turning back.
Ahead of her is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. She thinks of it as a 400-foot steel wall standing between her and a relaxing weekend on Fenwick Island, Del.
The bridge is four miles long.
A 10-minute car ride.
With guardrails on each side.
But something about how the road rises, bends and falls — how drivers can’t see land on the horizon until they’re almost on the other side — is unnerving. Scary, even. People who have careers and kids and mortgages, who are past the point in their lives where they’re worried about a final or fitting in with friends, can’t face the thought of tackling the Bay Bridge.
So, they get someone else to do it.
Morgan hops out of the driver’s seat of her black Hyundai Palisade and slides into the passenger side. Lisa Okes, 53, a driver for Kent Island Express, takes the wheel.
The service has been operating for more than 20 years. Steven Eskew has been running it for 11 since he got out of his business of moving people and their things from house to house and into this operation of carrying folks from one highway stop to the next.
For $40 cash or $50 credit, Eskew and his team of five drivers will take people over the bridge from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week.
“The bridge,” Eskew said, “is like a speed bump in their road.”
He and his crew shepherd around 6,000 rides a year. Eskew says service hasn’t quite recovered from the pandemic, but he’s gotten more calls since the collapse of Baltimore’s Key Bridge in March. The tragedy hasn’t heightened his concerns, but Okes can’t help but reflect.
“I do think about [safety] more often than I ever did before,” she said. “We travel the bridge 30, sometimes 60 times a day, but I wouldn’t let it stop me.”
Morgan, 39, is telling Okes about the final time — about five years ago — that she drove herself over solo.
“Why am I gripping? Why am I shaking? Like, what’s happening?” Morgan said. “I felt like the car was veering toward the wall, and I was going so slow and was so sweaty.”
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Okes reassures Morgan that her fear is common. That it’s driven in part by the tightly packed lanes. That everyone’s anxiety levels drop once the bridge swoops down toward the mainland.
Morgan, who lives in Northeast Washington, responds that her hands are clamming up.
“I pay 80 bucks to go to the beach now,” Morgan said. “When it could be $2.50.”
They’ve gotten to the other side. Okes deposits Morgan along the shoulder of the road with an exit sign to Stevensville, Md.
Eskew has been following in his white Ford Escape to scoop Okes up. Morgan was Ride No. 14 of the day.
Eskew and Okes are back at the weigh station. Ride No. 16 is here: someone who has been dreading this drive. Even with the Kent Island Express.
“I have been stressing myself out all day,” says Hailey Griffin, 23, from the passenger seat of her black Mercedes ML350. “I’m still going to have a panic attack regardless.”
“I absolutely hate this bridge,” she said. “And since the Key Bridge collapsed, I don’t have a lot of confidence in bridges.”
The hairstylist from Mount Airy, Md., said she’s terrified of heights. Even her mom was unable to drive over this bridge on family vacations to Ocean City.
But then Griffin got a little older and her anxiety spiked and now she doesn’t love driving through tunnels or flying on airplanes.
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“It makes me so angry because it’s so irrational,” Griffin said. “I used to always make fun of my mom.”
She hops out along the side of the road — the same place where Morgan exited hours before — and forks over $40. Now, to the beach.
Eskew and Okes have three more riders after Griffin, then they’ll call it a day. Tomorrow they’ll be back at the weigh station to start the process all over again. There will always two of them: One to drive the customer over the bridge, one to shadow.
Because even the professional bridge crossers can’t do it completely alone.
