Today, I drove to band practise in Hallam (for Lord Mouth, not Left of Crazy. Oh yeah, the metal band is now called Lord Mouth. I like it; blow me if you don't). Anyway, I made sure I got out of the house early. Early enough to swing by my local café and get a flat white, and yet still be able to drive into Hallam on time.
I forgot about Murphy's Law. Actually, no. I forgot about STUPID FUCKING ROAD WORKS/WORKERS OF FUCKING STUPID FESTERING IN A MASSIVE FUCKING CAULDRON OF GODDAMN STUPID...
As I pulled onto the freeway onramp just past Chadstone (big mall, for those of you not from Oz), what should have been relatively smooth sailing on the freeway was all of a sudden halted by a big fuck-off wall of traffic. Kinda like this:
I know it's not that easy to see the big line of traffic disappearing off into the horizon, but trust me, it's there. This photo was taken after I'd already been incrementally inching forward, in fits and starts, my clutch really not liking these little movements forward, for quite some time. The first time I've regretted buying a manual car...
And, of course, I couldn't back out of the freeway entrance. So I had to wait.
And wait.
And wait some fucking more.
This is on a Sunday morning, mind you. This is also after I made sure I would get to Hallam early.
I waited a hell of a long time, getting (as you can imagine) angrier and angrier by the passing nanosecond, as traffic inched forward and people ducked and weaved (or crept and crawled) into and out of lanes and refused to let other people in.
After about twenty minutes, I saw what was causing this ridiculous Sunday morning traffic jam:
They were funnelling THREE FOUR FUCKING LANES ON A FREEWAY INTO ONE. And you can tell on the sign that it's not done too many times, as the third contemptuous "NO LANE" sign has been added on rather amateurishly.
I could not believe it. Of all the goddamned bone-headed things to do. Why they couldn't close down two at the most, work on that bit of road, then close the other two off is utterly beyond me. It took all I had in me to not roll down my window as I passed the moronic road workers, all stereotypically lounging around on their bit of blocked-off bitumen, and yell a few choice words about them being over-unionised fucktarded cockspanks etc etc...
You know what made it even worse? After it was too late to do anything about, I turned on the radio and caught a traffic report, which helpfully informed me of this: "...traffic is banked up all along the Monash Freeway due to roadworks, so please choose an alternate route."
GAH...guess I'll be listening to traffic reports from now on.
Yeah, I'm still cranky about it. I'm an elephant. No, fuck that: I'm a hate camel. And my hate hump has been filled; should last me a long time.
Oh yeah, and of course I was ridiculously late for band practise. My plans are foiled YET AGAIN. I hate you, Murphy.