traffic woes again radio news to laugh at, like … alternative routes!
Woke up and glanced at my phone to check the weather and a traffic alert popped up.
“Major Morning Headache as I85 closed …”, read the alert.
Dismayed but hopeful, I clicked on the alert.
It might be North Bound I85.
It might be South Bound, on the other side of Atlanta over by the airport.
It could be any number of exits that didn’t come between me and my job.
The alert loaded, slowly, slowly, too slowly.
Ads popped up.
Video tried to play.
I stood there, phone in hand, swatting all those down like flies.
The headline finally loaded.
Major Morning Headache as I85 closed South Bound at Pleasantdale Rd Exit. All lanes blocked.
Oh for crying out loud.
Smack dab in the middle of my commute.
Had it been targeting me, it could not have been at a worse place.
All lanes blocked?
Just what did that mean?
I click on WAZE and it estimates my commute at 45 minutes.
I looked closely and WAZE was basing this on the current time USING the dreaded ALTERNATIVE ROUTES.
If you don’t use WAZE or are not familiar with Atlanta, let me give you a warning.
Alternative Routes do not work.
The best advice I ever got about living in Atlanta was to make sure I lived within 5 minutes of a major freeway.
Otherwise it would take as long to get to the freeway as it took to get to my destination once I got on the freeway.
To leave the freeway, even during an ALL LANES BLOCKED emergency doesn’t work.
Besides, the alternative routes are already full from there usual morning traffic.
I got myself ready drove off to work.
With resignation but some hope I made the turn onto I85 and within 10 minutes I was in gridlock.
I would click on 750AM for traffic every ten minutes or so.
The first reports, Traffic Guy was suggesting those wonderful ALTERNATIVE ROUTES.
Satellite Blvd., Buford Highway and Peachtree Industrial.
Approaching the Pleasanthill Rd Exit, I could see rookie drivers making the choice to try these routes and making the effort to get off I85 and over to one of these side roads.
I stayed put.
My time to work was 3 hours.
30 minutes later, Traffic Guy was still advising alternative routes but that they were backing up and 2 lanes on i85 were now open.
15 more minutes and the accident was being cleared, my total trip was 2 hours.
Traffic Guy was announcing that the backup was hitting I85 all the way back to Duluth and impacting all other local roads.
moonlit morning drive full moon over Atlanta pretty, still so wrong
Dr. Samuel Johnson famously said about the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, that it was, “Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.” (The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) by James Boswell)
A full moon was shining this morning in the clear cold, VERY COLD, dark of this November morning when I left for work.
I headed west towards the moon as it sank lower towards the horizon and the sky slowly changed from black to gray to blue.
With Atlanta and its buildings in view, the moon hung over the city with a complete spectrum of morning hues across the dome of the sky.
It was stunning.
Incredibly simple.
It happens every day as the globe spins and the skies revolve over head.
Still, I felt lucky to see it.
I felt even luckier that I got to see it while remaining comfortably warm in my car.
Never the less, on the whole, all things considered, I would rather have been in bed.
morning drive, traffic slowed by fatality just inconvenienced?
Minutes after merging onto I85 Southbound to midtown Atlanta, traffic started slowing down and then stopped.
Not good but not terrible.
This often happens as the freeway climbs up Peachtree Ridge in Gwinnett County and the trucks slow down.
I stayed stopped for a minute and then two minutes and I open up the WAZE app on my iPhone.
Checking Route … HEAVY TRAFFIC … You will reach your destination in …. 2 HOURS!!
TWO HOURS?
Radio on in time to catch the traffic report and it opens with RED FLAG ALERT for I85 in Gwinnett County. Traffic accident with fatalities has all lanes closed just past Boggs Rd.
When I was in college and drove back home it took 2 to 3 hours to get to Grand Rapids from Ann Arbor.
It seemed like forever.
I was going to be in my car that long just to get to work this morning.
every day, each drive story sparkingly renewed new chapter added
Mark Twain wrote of life on the Mississippi River, saying “There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring. I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home.“
I was struck this morning by the comparison of Twain’s river and my driving on i85.
There is an odd, industrial age, dystopian (been wanting to use that word for ages), Fritz Langish, beauty to all the cars and trucks and concrete.
I also have learned to ‘read the river’ on my drives.
Catching the glimpse of the cobalt blue emergency strobes sets off warnings.
A sign that says Chamblee-Tucker Road 9 Miles / 20 minutes translates instantly to traffic moving at 30 miles per hour.
Break lights 10 cars ahead has me slowing down.
Twain continues, “The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book — a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkingly renewed with every reperusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an italicized passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it; for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to a pilot’s eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter.”
No Haiku For You 