Saturday, April 08, 2006

Show Me The Way Home

What a mess.

I am on the turnpike every single day. It costs me $1.40 a day to go to and from my office. It's worth every penny. The roads are in good shape, the traffic flows better than any other freeway in the area, and in the winter, the plows or salt trucks are out with the first falling snow flake.

From my house to my office via the turnpike takes 40 to 45 minutes. Long, but livable. It's spring time now, and what is the state flower of Ohio? Construction barrels. They are sprouting up everywhere. Especially on my beloved turnpike.

For a week or so, the east bound and west bound lanes were decreased from three lanes to two lanes each way. Ok, a little slower but still doable.

Thursday night I am on my way when there is a looooong line at the toll booth just to pick up your toll ticket. They are handing you the ticket stating that there is a three mile back up heading west because it's down to one lane. Hey, that's my direction to get home! Or you could risk life and limb to cut through the grass behind the administration building, right next to a cliff and try to cross a zillion lanes of traffic and head back the way you came. That is the option I took and there are not words to describe the attempts at crossing those zillion lanes of more pissed off people that are still waiting in line to hear that they aren't going anywhere quickly.

So that was the first nightmare. Then, Friday morning, I'm dumb enough to try it again. C'mon, the previous day had to be a fluke. It can't really be that bad. Friday morning proved it was that bad.

So, now I've had to find an alternate route to and from work. The word on the street (ok the turnpike) is that I will need this alternate route until June 1st. That's when the construction is scheduled to be completed. The alternate route may be more scenic but it takes a lot longer. My drive to and from work now is taking me over an hour each way. This sucks. Unfortunately, it's still faster than going through the construction zones.

I try to look for the silver lining in any day. I mean, every day has to have SOME bright spot in it. Yesterday's bright spot? I had a great hair day. Really. Every hair went just where I wanted it to and my hair spray lasted all day. Yep, a great hair day.

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