traffic jam

It's friday night, so they decided to close the freeway to work on a couple of bridges. I was coming back from my friend Doug's house. It should take me 30 minutes or maybe less to get home. It took me just over two hours. The detour was five miles, and took me an hour and a half. It's mostly my fault, because I shouldn't have followed the detour. But I didn't realize how bad it would be, and I was kinda being putzy. I missed the first opportunity to turn off, and after that there weren't any good ones for a while. There's a long stretch in that area with no access to the east or west. By the time I got past that place, I figured it would be over soon. It was not. Even if I had found a road to turn off on that was half a mile from the end of the detour, and I had also gotten lost, I would have gotten home sooner.

Right near the end of the detour, it widens to two lanes, then there's a left turn at a light. I was going to get in the right lane, and zoom past the traffic, and keep going straight. But then I decided that since I was that close, I might as well keep with the detour, since I'd be on the freeway and moving sooner. I was wrong. We were still creeping. When I got to the light, I realized why this was taking so long. It was one of those big intersections with a right turn lane, to straight lanes and two left turn lanes - they're huge. There was one left turn lane open since there was only one lane open to go to. The lane was being controlled by the regular stoplight routine, and could only turn on the green arrow. That arrow was on for less than ten seconds at a time.

Let me repeat. An entire freeway's worth of traffic was being stopped at a ten-second arrow. I don't know what the entire cycle was, but it was probably 45 seconds. I was livid. Still am.

I had things I needed to do tonight. Still do.