Teresa has been absent for the past three days, due to a nasty head cold. So, we needed to start out a little earlier for her school so she could check in early and get an absence excuse. So, of course, there were two major logjams on the way there. Every morning, that I take her to school, we encounter a bottleneck on the freeway. This particular freeway is called the Harbor Freeway, (or the 110 to Southern Californians). The 110 is five lanes wide where I first get on. But, I immediately have to move over three lanes, if I want to continue south. That's because, if you stay in the two right lanes, they merge off to the San Diego Freeway, (405). Now then, the three lanes, that are left of the 110, now have to take on the the people who are northbound on the 405 and want to merge onto the 110. So, two lanes from the 405 merge down to two, just before the 110, and then that one lane has about 250 feet before it merges into our three lanes. Then, you creep along until the southbound 405 freeway merges onto the 110. When that happens, we now pick up two more lanes and are up to five again. Once that happens, the trucks and slower traffic move over to the right and traffic speed picks up again. So, usually, when we hit the bottleneck, it will take 3 to 4 minutes to move about a quarter mile. Except this morning. As soon as I got on the freeway, I had trouble moving over into the southbound 110 lanes. Traffic was bumper to bumper and moving slowly. I knew right away that there had been an accident. The way traffic was moving, I expected a 10 car pile-up that would be blocking all five lanes.
But no..... After it took us 10 minutes to run the bottleneck, at the very, very end, just before we pick up the two lanes that would bring us up to five. There had been a minor fender bender between a late model Cadillac and a Nissan truck. The Caddy had smashed into the back of the truck. The Highway Patrol had already arrived and had the two vehicles moved over to the side, into the breakdown lane, and out of the way of traffic. But, that didn't stop people from slowing down to gawk. So, we get past that, and the freeway starts moving again. But, our early lead is now gone. As we approach the offramp, that I need to take to get to Teresa's school, I noticed that the cars are backed up onto the freeway. This is not normal. Usually, I can cruise off and there may be 5 cars backed up from the stop sign. But no, this morning, a rather large truck was unable to negotiate the tight right turn from the freeway onto the street and was now stuck. Not only was he stuck, he was blocking all four streets that fed into the intersection. No one could move, until he got out of the way. If he continued forward, he would have had to drive up onto the curb. While that was all well and good, he would, however, have taken out a street sign, a power pole and a light pole which were planted extremely close to the curb. So, everyone sat and watched as this truck backed up a few inches, drove forward a few inches, backed up, etc. Meanwhile, I am watching the time tick away. And then, I started laughing. Hysterically! I couldn't believe this. It was rather amusing. Teresa was a little worried about me, I think. But seriously!? What could I do!? Nothing!!!! If she were late, she would have some good excuses. But, after several attempts at backing up and pulling forward, the truck managed to squeeze by the curb and continue on his way. I got Teresa to school, 5 minutes before the bell was supposed to ring. It was enough time for her to get her absence note. So, everything came out okay.
Posted by Valkyre at March 11, 2004 08:35 PM