That's how long it took me to get home tonight. Susan has blogged a lot about the horrors of traffic here in the DC suburbs but today took the cake. I left school at 5:50. I walked into my house at 8:00. That's more than 2 hours. It's less than 20 miles from my school to my house. The reason: A truck accident on I-95 south right at "my" exit. Apparently the accident happened BEFORE rush hour so that must have been like 10am - there's not much day that would classify as "before" rush hour. And apparently 95 south was shut down for awhile. Traffic was backed up everywhere! I know about 12 different ways to get home from school and I tried all of them. Every route I took I was greeted with lines of backed up cars. Many times I just broke down into tears I was so frustrated and feeling so clausterphobic about being literally being stuck with no way out. Kinda made me wish I was driving my little RV again...then I could have pulled off and watched TV or something! :)
Do you realize how far I could get in 2 hours driving the speed limit? Almost the whole way to my friend in Central PA's house. Williamsburg - which is like a whole other era so I could practically go back in time in 2 hours. The Mountains - Shenandoah National Park is less than 2 hours away. And it took me 2 hours to drive 20 miles today.
There are only 2 other times that I remember traffic being this bad...one was Sept 18, 2001, exactly one week after 9/11 - they re-opened some of the military bases and with the heightend security traffic backed up very quickly. I was interning in Southeast DC at the time and it took me 3 hours to get to work. I didn't have a cell phone either. There was a silver lining then though...I was at the top of a hill on I-275 in Washington DC with an amazing view of the Capitol, The Monument, and The Pentagon when they played the National Anthem in conmemortation of the one week aniversary. That was an amazing moment.
The other time traffic was this bad was the day a fertilizer truck over turned on I-95 and they had to shut down the road for the whole day and re-pave the road b/c the fertilizer ate through the asphalt! That was a big mess because there was no way to get south of DC and 95 was backed up from the Beltway to Fredericksburg. The silver lining there....I wasn't sitting in the traffic.
Today, no silver lining.
Drive safe out there folks...you wouldn't want the biggest back up in DC history to be your fault! :)
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Did you hear about the accident yesterday at 2:30 in the morning that they still hadn't clean up at 8:00 yesterday morning!?!? In Tyson's on the Beltway?
Seriously, the traffic here is ridiculous. I hate living here for that very reason. I feel for you. All summer, if I was in Woodbridge on Thursday or Friday, it'd take 90 minutes to go those 20 miles home. AUGH! I would sit on Rte 1 with a book and read.
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