Tag: traffic

Damn that Traffic Jam

My car has a gauge on the dashboard that is a timer and an odometer. Ever since losing the backroad route to work I have been in the habit of zeroing it as I start a drive to or from work.

This morning the 43ish mile drive took 52 minutes. That’s fantastic. I never get in that fast in morning. It was beautiful.

This evening I did not go home. I went to my parent’s house. That shortens my drive by about 10 miles or so. The drive took two hours. At one point I looked at the gauge and saw that I was exactly one hour into the drive. I had gone nine miles. Do the math, kiddies.

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The Traffic Days of the Week

Foggy Monday traffic jam:
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Blue sky Tuesday traffic jam:
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Oh how I long to see what Wednesday brings.

No, I don’t.

ADDENDUM:
Well whaddaya know? The picture from today caught someone looking down from the overpass, laughing at all of the pathetic travelers.
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Kid Morning Commute

I haven’t checked the time and distance on a commute that follows dropping off the kids in the morning. It’s also September now, so the times are going to be drastically longer.

Case in point. On Friday evening I pulled out of my parking spot at about 5:40 and pulled up to the house at about 6:30. That’s 50 minutes, and is the best time I could possibly hope for.

How’d I do this morning?

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Four minutes shy of double the time from last Friday. This is my life now.

You Know it’s September When…

It’s definitely September. Last week my average commute time was about an hour. Both rides on Friday were more like 50 minutes. It was flat out glorious.

This morning, the first commute in September, was close to 90 minutes.

It is definitely September now.

I Saw Something Cool

Yesterday on my drive home from work through the back roads of America, I saw something really cool that I’d never seen before.

I was in Wayland, MA (I think. I might have still been in Framingham) and a car did a really stupid U-turn in front of me. It left the westbound lane of route 126 and turned around into the eastbound lane, which was stopped at an intersection. It was a little car, I didn’t catch the make or model, and it had a very strange looking, very tall contraption rigged up on the roof.

My first thought was, what the hell is that? My second thought was, I wonder if… My third thought was, That’s gotta be a Google Street View camera car! As it took it’s U-Turn I could see Google Street View painted on the side. Cool! I had never seen one of those puppies before. I was on the phone with my wife at the time, so a picture was not practical. It didn’t matter though, it ducked down a side street as soon as the traffic started moving. It was only in front of me for about 10 seconds.

Now when folks marvel at how Google gets the street view images, I can tell them I know all about it. There’s a big tall rig with a 365 degree camera set up on top of it and it just drives up and down the street snapping pics as it goes.

An even more amazing traffic occurrence happened this morning. I took the shortest root available to me for my drive in to work and it took less than an hour. 93S to 128S to 90W. I don’t know what possessed me not to take the longer, yet generally faster, way in to the office, but it worked out for me today. Granted two weeks from now when school starts up again the root I took today will be gridlock all the way. Oh, and did I mention we’re moving to a new building soon and my long way around will no longer be possible, and I will be stuck with essentially the root I took today? Yippee.