Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Holy Crap!



Today, I learned my tolerance for traffic that is at a dead stop is roughly two and a half hours. I think this is not bad. I know this because that was my breaking point. That's when the headache came on and when I started cursing at people who were honking when there was clearly no place to go. That was when I nearly broke into tears when Jeff called and I was no further to getting home than I was an hour and half prior to that moment. Okay, I'm exagerating. I was a mile closer. Seriously. It took me an hour and a half to drive a mile east. It took me twenty minutes to drive two hundreths of a mile. I was still in a good mood when I decided to time how much progress I was making. This did include trying to find a better route, but there was standstill traffic everywhere I turned.

The first half of the day was lovely. I went to my knitting group, had lunch with Mary and went to Vroman's, one of the few independent bookstores left in our area. Everything went downhill from there. The freeway was shut down due to an overturned tanker. I think it might have been carrying gasoline. So I had to take the streets home from Pasadena to Claremont. Around 25 miles. Traffic everywhere. In the end, it took me three and a half hours to get home. Jeff's in it now from West LA. He's taking a different freeway, but you know what happens when one freeway shuts down, it creates havoc on the others. He called me at 7:30 pm (2 hours into his drive) and told me he thinks he'll be home by 9pm.

At one point, I was listening to my iPod, I texted Mary because I had to vent and I pulled out my knitting. All things one is not supposed to do while driving, but I would argue with an officer of the law if I would have been pulled over that I wasn't driving. I was sitting in my car. Thankfully, there was no way an officer was going to get anywhere near my car to see that I was doing all of those things. The knitting did calm me down a little.


I worked on Le Slouch. I'm just about ready to start my decreases.

I finished my Tamarind Cowl. I hope to take pictures soon to post.


Today is my boy, Cooper's, first birthday. Here he is in his new favorite napping place. Happy birthday Cooper! We love you!

BTW, thanks for listening. I needed that.

6 comments:

jillian said...

I heard about the traffic on my way home - so sorry you both got stuck in it. It was liquid asphalt in the report I listened to. Blech.

Anonymous said...

What a cutie pie, all curled up in the sink!

It was rough traffic all around, good thing you made it home okay!

Madge said...

This is weird, but the exact same thing happened to me going east from Claremont on the 210. Only it was some guy threatening to jump off an overpass. To get home to Silverlake took 3+ hours, and I was a wreck, too. And it's usually such a nice freeway. Heh. At least you had your knitting to keep you busy while you fumed.

Happy birthday to Cooper! You totally have to submit that photo to catsinsinks.com.

mary said...

So sorry to hear it was a cursed afternoon! You can text me anytime and use all types of foul language!

Ellen Bloom said...

I heard about that asphalt spill! Yikes! Sorry about the non-driving drive. Welcome to my world.
I live 8 miles from work. Sometimes it takes me over an hour to get home! Argh!

Cirilia said...

That's terrible! I've been known to knit in extreme traffic as well...

The band is in fact Of Montreal; it's credited at the end of the video =)