Traffic

Traffic heading into the office this morning was pretty bad. Fortunately for my schedule, I left the house super early and made it to work with plenty of time to spare.

265/365
265/365

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend here in the United States. The expectation is that everyone and their uncle will be out on the highways at some point. We’re likely going to see them all. We’re driving from Massachusetts to Florida. The traffic is going to be epic. Or at least the potential for it is there.

I’m just prepping myself for the worst while hoping for the best. We’re giving ourselves a ton of extra time for the drive, so even a slew of awful traffic won’t put us off our schedule. We’re ready and we can hack it. I just hope we don’t have to.

Traffic sucks, man.

Just Like the Bad Old Days

This is why I hate working in the office. Well, it’s one of the many reasons why working at home is infinitely preferable.

I drove for an hour this morning on both route 93 South and route 128 South without coming anywhere near the speed limit. From Methuen, MA to Waltham, MA at an average of probably 20 miles per hour. My 40 mile commute should have taken me about 40 minutes on the highway. Instead it took about 95 minutes.

No reason for it, just volume and gridlock. It’s infuriating. The best part is that I get to do it again tonight at around 5:30pm. Hoo-friggin’-ray.

Turkey? No. Traffic Jam? Yes

Well that was a kick in the scrotum.

No turkey for me. They closed down the gift distribution system at 2:00 without ever telling us whether the small turkeys had arrived or not. I take that to mean they did not. If they tell us to come in another day to pick up our turkeys I am going to blow it off. Any unclaimed gifts get donated to a shelter, so that works for me. I really love me some xmas turkey though. I’m a little ticked off. Hooray.

What was even better? I left the office at 2:00pm. Waze told me I would be home by 2:45. Well, 2:58 is what it ended up being. You see, I hit me a traffic jam on route 93 North. Yup, pre-3:00pm traffic jams. Oh yeah. The accident I was stuck behind wasn’t the cause of the traffic, it was a symptom of it. Hooray.

I tried blindly taking a picture for my photo a day thing as I was crossing the Merrimack River. All I got was the upper left corner of my passenger door frame. Oh well. Hooray.

Traffic

The weight loss clinic is 21 minutes from my house, according to Google Maps.

21 minutes there, a few minutes to drop off the paperwork I need them to fill out and fax to the insurance company, and 21 minutes back. I should be able to do that in less than an hour with ease, right?

I did it in 59 minutes. Not bad, but there was a hiccup I didn’t consider. I would have seen it coming light years away if we were still in the office every day.

It’s Friday… in June… Beach/NH lakes traffic. It was starting to build up on route 495 North at the big interchanges (routes 3 and 93) on my way there. We’re talking about 1:15pm and already there was traffic.

Yup. That’s normal on Fridays in the summer. The traffic heading North is brutal all day long. Fortunately it wasn’t too bad for me this time.

Oh the things you forget about when you’re working from home every day instead of commuting to the office.