From: geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Traffic Peeves
Followup-To: alt.peeves
Date: 25 Jan 1993 18:38:17 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Menlo Park, Ca.
Distribution: alt
Reply-To: geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)
NNTP-Posting-Host: purplehaze.corp.sun.com



Leaving Sears Point International Raceway yesterday afternoon and following
a stop for dinner at the Denny's in Vallejo with JZ, I hit the highway to
return home.  I'd spent a fairly busy afternoon helping tend to a couple of 
race cars and shlepping various objects around our paddock space, and I was
looking forward to getting home, taking a shower and relaxing.  Even without
the physical labor aspect, a day at the track takes it out of you; being out
in the sun, wind and noise for several hours on your feet takes its toll.

The first 45 minutes or so went fine.  But as soon as I reached the town
of Albany, just north of Berkeley, traffic came to a halt.  Rounding the
hillside after a few minutes of stop-and-go, I saw a sea of brake lights all
the way to the horizon.  This was the East Bay, after all, a part of the
Bay Area known for its horrendous traffic congestion and slowdowns for no
apparent reason, so something like this was well within the realm of nor-
mality for the area, generally speaking.  The mere presence of a discarded 
Pepsi can on the shoulder is enough to back traffic up for miles because of 
rubberneckers. But on a Sunday evening?  That was strange, and more than a 
little peevesome.

I crept along at the proverbial snail's pace for several miles through
Berkeley and Oakland until I was able to make good my escape onto the
Bay Bridge -- or so I thought.  Not a quarter-mile past the toll plaza,
on the ramp up to the cantilever section of the bridge, there was *another*
sea of brakelights.  I figured I'd get out of the traffic by jumping over to 
my own side of the Bay as soon as I could, and get to enjoy the nighttime 
view of San Francisco from the upper deck of the Bay Bridge in the bargain,
but I ended up spending another frustrating half hour creeping along in 
bumper-to-bumper traffic.  

Needless to say, this pissed me off; all I wanted to do was get home.  Was 
it so unreasonable to expect the highways to be clear on a weekend, for 
Christ's sake?  And this traffic wasn't even due to the snow bunnies coming 
home from Lake Tahoe, either; I only saw one car with a ski rack the whole 
time.

The traffic finally broke loose where US 101 rounded Potrero Hill and turned
south down the Peninsula past Candlestick Park, but by that time I was 
fighting to stay awake.  I'd finished listening to the Jackson Browne tape 
I'd gotten out of the trunk back in Vallejo, and I'd reached the point of 
fatigue at which music was an annoyance; the B-52s album on the flip side
would've been more than I could handle by then.  Fortunately, I managed to
make it all the way to Mountain View without falling asleep at the wheel.



Geoff


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Geoff Miller                    + + + + + + + +        Sun Microsystems
geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM  + + + + + + + +     Menlo Park, California
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Geoff Miller			+ + + + + + + +        Sun Microsystems
geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM	+ + + + + + + +     Menlo Park, California
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