And it wasn't even raining...
So, I leave at 8:00 a.m. to get to my job by 9:00 a.m., although it usually only takes 45 minutes (a relative 'only' - yes) if there's nothing going on on IH-35 which is prone to accidents and construction pitfalls as well as the usual jams and delays. Rain was expected later, but this morning it was merely (another relative term) humid as I got on the highway. I hadn't gotten out of my own town when I saw the traffic was clearly backed-up. I slowed down and the traffic slowed down to a crawl. And then stopped. Completely. It would inch up a couple of car lengths and then it would stop again. At 8:50 a.m. I called work and said that I wasn't sure what was going on, but I was certainly going to be late. I then called my sister on her cell phone and asked her if she was stuck because she has to drive the same stretch of highway, she just doesn't have to go as far as I do into Austin.
She told me that an eighteen-wheeler had a terrible accident and burned around 4:00 a.m. that morning and the clean-up required a platoon of fire fighters and hazmat people and that the highway had been completely closed down for awhile. She'd left earlier and taken an alternate route and was still 2 1/2 hours late for work. She said she'd call me with an update of information when she got to work.
Just before 10:00 a.m. I called work again and told them that I hadn't moved much. They looked up the traffic report and said they'd expect me when they saw me.
I had plenty to listen to (so many Pendant shows on CDs - yay! :) and I even had a couple of very low sugar, high protein bars, but nothing to drink. I became very thirsty and then it crossed my mind, sometime during the third hour, that perhaps it was better that I had nothing to drink as I usually do. The increasing tension of the entire highway-turned-into-parking-lot was unpleasant - the jerk behind me actually bumped my car (which made a dent in my calm). I couldn't go anywhere. At some point we figured I was making a grand speed of one mile per hour. I glanced over at the discount theater - I was stuck there for a very long time - and wondered about taking in a movie (I could have, it turned out) - I hadn't seen "Kung Fu Panda" which I'd heard good things about - that might be fun.
My sister called me back around noon and told me that the expected 'opening' of the highway was noon (they were diverting traffic off to the feeder road), but it had been updated to 3:30. We agreed it was better to know, but it was also quite dismaying. But I had to laugh, there was nothing I could do. I called work every once in awhile to update them and to talk to someone because I was feeling like a Zen-dolphin in a landshark dry pool. Such idiocy! And it was caged. And every once in awhile it would leap across my bow with a frustrated growl, plow through the field to the just-as-backed-up frontage road and into the snarling midst of others just like itself.
The fire of the eighteen-wheeler was so intense that it damaged the road itself. When I finally drove by the scene of the accident, they were repaving some of the highway. The truck had been burned so badly it had fallen to pieces that they picked up with a bulldozer.
There came a point when it all became rather surreal.
I got to work right at 1 p.m. It took me FIVE HOURS to get there!!! This is definitely the longest time I've ever been stuck in some kind of traffic jam, the next worst being when an inch of snow fell over a thin coat of ice and it paralyzed the entire city and took me four hours to get home when it usually took me fifteen minutes.
Five hours. I'm going to have to go in tomorrow to make up the time so I won't have to use vacation time that I'm trying to save so I can go see Kevin because I miss him and who knows when I'll get a chance to do that - probably not until Thanksgiving! :(
I was so looking forward to Friday and then time to myself, to write and other stuff. I managed to keep laughing at myself and the situation because there's no point in getting mad or whatever, but ... geez. Five hours.
She told me that an eighteen-wheeler had a terrible accident and burned around 4:00 a.m. that morning and the clean-up required a platoon of fire fighters and hazmat people and that the highway had been completely closed down for awhile. She'd left earlier and taken an alternate route and was still 2 1/2 hours late for work. She said she'd call me with an update of information when she got to work.
Just before 10:00 a.m. I called work again and told them that I hadn't moved much. They looked up the traffic report and said they'd expect me when they saw me.
I had plenty to listen to (so many Pendant shows on CDs - yay! :) and I even had a couple of very low sugar, high protein bars, but nothing to drink. I became very thirsty and then it crossed my mind, sometime during the third hour, that perhaps it was better that I had nothing to drink as I usually do. The increasing tension of the entire highway-turned-into-parking-lot was unpleasant - the jerk behind me actually bumped my car (which made a dent in my calm). I couldn't go anywhere. At some point we figured I was making a grand speed of one mile per hour. I glanced over at the discount theater - I was stuck there for a very long time - and wondered about taking in a movie (I could have, it turned out) - I hadn't seen "Kung Fu Panda" which I'd heard good things about - that might be fun.
My sister called me back around noon and told me that the expected 'opening' of the highway was noon (they were diverting traffic off to the feeder road), but it had been updated to 3:30. We agreed it was better to know, but it was also quite dismaying. But I had to laugh, there was nothing I could do. I called work every once in awhile to update them and to talk to someone because I was feeling like a Zen-dolphin in a landshark dry pool. Such idiocy! And it was caged. And every once in awhile it would leap across my bow with a frustrated growl, plow through the field to the just-as-backed-up frontage road and into the snarling midst of others just like itself.
The fire of the eighteen-wheeler was so intense that it damaged the road itself. When I finally drove by the scene of the accident, they were repaving some of the highway. The truck had been burned so badly it had fallen to pieces that they picked up with a bulldozer.
There came a point when it all became rather surreal.
I got to work right at 1 p.m. It took me FIVE HOURS to get there!!! This is definitely the longest time I've ever been stuck in some kind of traffic jam, the next worst being when an inch of snow fell over a thin coat of ice and it paralyzed the entire city and took me four hours to get home when it usually took me fifteen minutes.
Five hours. I'm going to have to go in tomorrow to make up the time so I won't have to use vacation time that I'm trying to save so I can go see Kevin because I miss him and who knows when I'll get a chance to do that - probably not until Thanksgiving! :(
I was so looking forward to Friday and then time to myself, to write and other stuff. I managed to keep laughing at myself and the situation because there's no point in getting mad or whatever, but ... geez. Five hours.