Wide Load

I've been doing a lot of driving this month. Even without the two trips to Mom's and back, I've been away from the house every day between work and church. Church and Job 1 aren't that big of a deal; it's all two-lane roads. Job 2, on the other hand, is easiest accessed by taking the freeway.

Or it was, at least, until Construction Season started. About three miles from where we get on, the road narrows to one lane. The other day, the truckers decided to make us merge early. I hit 35 on the on-ramp before I had to hit the brake. I understand they're trying to stop the bottleneck, and get people to quit speeding to the merge point and shove their way in, but three miles at fifteen mph does not make sense to me. Lucky for me I was only going shopping that day. I finished work early and decided to go pick up a few things I needed for projects around the house. It took me a half hour to go ten miles, and I would have been downright angry if they'd made me late for work.

Yesterday, I left Job 2 and there was no way I was taking the freeway home. It was starting to storm and the last thing I wanted was to be stuck in traffic with no way out. When I turned onto the road there was a dump truck ahead of me. We got stuck at a badly timed light, and it took us three cycles to get to the front, but I didn't know that until the third cycle because I couldn't see around the daggone truck. I turned left for another alternate route and found myself behind a moving truck. Curses, foiled again! Luckily, he turned left when I turned right a couple of lights later, but there was a bus in front of me, and HE regulated my speed for me for a few more miles until I turned onto the street my subdivision is on.

I have found that when I encounter the same annoyance over and over, it's because I'm supposed to learn something from it. It seems I've done very little this month other than sit in traffic staring at the back end of a large vehicle. I have no idea what I'm supposed to learn from this, but I hope I figure it out soon.