Thursday, November 11, 2010

Epilogue Part 2: Driving through the dreaded Northeast Corridor

October 30th

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

If time and money were no factor, Nicole and I would be riding our bikes through North Carolina's Outer Banks and on to Florida. We would be rewarded by traveling in a sleeper train car back to Connecticut.

If time and money were not a factor, I wouldn't be stuck in traffic trying to get through D.C.'s Beltway.

The drive up wasn't all bad. Nicole and I were able to listen to the Rally on C-Span radio. Ah, Washington, you know what's entertaining!

To avoid some very hideous tolls, and for the irony of the situation, we road the Pulaski Highway once we passed Baltimore. Did we lose a little time? Sure. Was it worth it to save eight dollars just to ride on I-95 for eight minutes in Delaware? Absolutely.

It was very late once we got to the New Jersey Turnpike. At the rate we were going, we wouldn't get home until about 3 o'clock in the morning. The days of finding interesting and obscure soda's were far behind us. From here on the only taste was Coca-Cola. They didn't even have Dr. Pepper, owned by Coca-Cola. And you know what? Coke tastes awful. Did they get it from a Coke oven?

Nicole and I tried to keep up pointless conversations like these to stay awake and alert. Once we reached the George Washington Bridge, though, we could have just fallen asleep.

As we got closer to the onramp, we reached a complete standstill.

"How is this possible?" I nearly shouted. "It's 1:30 in the morning!" Nicole calmed me down a little bit. Just be patient, she reminded me. "I'm sure we'll get through eventually."

Okay. Over time, we slowly crawled forward. Very slowly. In about an hour we had traveled a quarter mile.

And we still hadn't reached the actual bridge.

"Do they have a traffic report at this hour?" I asked as I violently punched the radio knob. CBS News 880, traffic and weather on the 8s.

Apparently, there was an apartment collapse near the top level and the bottom had already been closed due to maintenance. Estimated clean-up time: an hour and half.

Well, we've been stuck for an hour already, we thought. Therefore, we only have half an hour to go. Then came another report ten minutes later. Estimated time to clear up: two and half hours!

Enraged, I navigated our way to the exit lane for Fort Lee. It took 15 minutes to reach the offramp because other drivers, in their own will of delusional lunacy, were using the offramp lane to drive another, oh, 16 feet before reaching the traffic tie up and thought I was going to do the same. Instead I floored it and drove to the Lincoln Tunnel. Once we reached Manhattan Island, I skipped out on the West Side Highway to instead reach FDR Drive.

I wanted to get as far away from that cursed bridge as possible. Even with the time it took to change my flat tire, it took me no more than 20 minutes to cross this bridge on a bicycle.

I had no time to lament the freedom lost, though. I wanted to get home before I fell asleep. We switched driver's once we reached Connecticut. Out of curiosity, I checked out the traffic report: It was just at that moment that the congestion was "starting to clear."

The remaining two hours were uneventful. We had to stop at Jeff's house (Nicole's brother) in order to get the keys to our apartment and our car. After that, we each drove the final leg into Manchester.

It was almost sunrise when walked in our front door. A dog from our downstair's neighbor screamed to the heavens upon our arrival.

Welcome home.

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