the you gotta be fucking kidding me update

so vacation time has come and gone. all around, it was great to go home, spend some time with the family, play a lot of mario strikers charged on nintendo wii, light fires in the fire place, take the niece to the aquarium and do some sled riding with her, etc. plus opening presents is a pretty good time. but you know, it doesn't really provide good writing or reading material.

it's been a while since i've been out on the internet and there really didn't seem like much reason to come back. after all, writing a boring entry isn't much better than reading a boring post...and i was feeling a little like that's where these things were going of late. that kind of depressed me. you know, not much going on, no kickball wars, frisbee success, blacked out drunk stories etc to discuss. what really is the point of all of this if it's just an update about my day.

unless my day goes like this:

9:30 am: wake up and pack the remainder of my stuff in the car
10:15 am - breakfast
11:15 am - leave the house for the dentist
11:45 am - arrive at the dentist, conveniently located on Elm St. Not making this up. Kindly, the appointment was short and easy...but there was something remaining in my head about being on Elm St. that wouldn't get out of my head.
12:10 pm - Realize that the highway I want to get on is backed up, so instead of taking the close entrance that will put me a mile further back, i take some side streets to enter at a different point. the first road i turn down is a dead end...or an omen, you look at however you want.
1:15 - arrive at my friends place in New Jersey. I was visiting a friend before I was going to head back to DC. I figured I would stay until 4. Sure, this was taking a slight risk because I would be leaving at the beginning of rush hour, but hey, it's the day after Christmas, it might be bad, but nothing like a Thanksgiving rush hour.

So our story starts at 4:05. I hit the road and once I hit the highway, I'm stuck in traffic. However, this is just for a toll and 1 mile and 15 minutes later, I'm through and into the clear. Next stop: New Jersey turnpike.

There are 2 options on the turnpike: cars only or cars and buses. Now, I'm a fucking moron for many reasons previously told here in the past. But this was just another example. The choices were "Roadway Closed" or "Cars, Trucks and Buses." Some cars were still going into the roadway closed way, so I went for it. The roadway was open, but this was the turnpike's way of telling you that it was not a good idea to drive down it. So I'm all like "I guess no one will go this way and I'll be in the clear." I was wrong.

About 4 miles into this, I'm in bumper to bumper traffic. It's about 4:50 at this point. The turnpike backs up here (around exit 9) because after exit 8A, the 2 lanes of Cars, Trucks and Buses merges with the cars only lanes in one major cluster fuck. So I know it's going to be a delay, but it was pretty horrendous how far back it starts. So at this point, the cars and trucks in the right lanes are flying by and i'm just sitting there trying to stay calm and tell myself I'll be out of this sooner rather than later.

Later was more like 6 pm. It took 1:10 to go 10 miles. That was pretty, pretty shitty. So once the merge takes place around 6 or 6:10, the road opens up a little and things are getting better.

Until one of those fucking signs on the overpasses says, "Major Congestion at Exit 1. Use 295." So I was all, "that's what I'll do." I couldn't stand to sit in any more traffic. So I make a few calls and finally get in touch with Nighthawk Naylor, who, thankfully, tells me to get off at exit 4, which I'm at right there. So off onto 73 South I go, which I'm told will hit up with 295 in a few miles.

For Christmas, one of my presents was a GPS machine for the car. It didn't so much help me out in this situation because it kept telling me to do a U-Turn, presumably to head back to the Turnpike, which I was not going to do. So after 30 minutes, I'm still driving down 73 South when the GPS telling me to veer off onto another random road. I decide this can't be good because there is still not 295 in sight. I do start to think that I'm heading pretty close to Atlantic City. I pull out the map and decide, it's time to turn around and follow the GPS machine. I'm thinking that I just didn't know about a turn off that would send me to 295. So following the GPS, I get onto the Atlantic City Expressway toward:

THE FUCKING NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE

At this point, I've just driven 45 minutes in the wrong direction and am now heading back to my own personal hell that is the New Jersey Turnpike....oh, and it's 7:15 and I'm STILL IN FUCKING JERSEY. 3 hours into what is a 3.5 hour drive (because I'm heading into the doctor's parents house in Md.) and I'm still in fucking jersey...and freaking the fuck out.

This was the first time that I realize that I'm screaming at the top of my lungs that I'm in Jersey...oh, and I'm driving about 95 in a rain storm on a crowded highway. This is also about the time I decide that I'm literally willing to drive off the road to avoid being in New Jersey any longer and thankfully dead only to realize that I'd probably live and when I woke up, I'd still be in a fucking hospital in Jersey...of course, then I start thinking that when the ambulance arrived at the scene of the accident, to tell them to either take me to delaware or pennsylvania or let me fucking die.

So I finally get back to the turnpike and find myself just north of exit 2. 45 minutes later and i'm 2 exits further down the road. I'M STILL IN FUCKING JERSEY

BANG go the knuckles into the roof of the car.

This is the point at which the doctor calls to see how my drive is going. I went on a fuck laced tirade for at least 2 straight minutes of just yelling into the phone about how i wanted to die, about how every motherfucker that drove on the turnpike today should be murdered and about how a bomb should drop on the fucking turnpike and kill us all. She was surprising supportive, which was nice. I started to perk up a bit. After all, this "Major Congestion" wasn't there at all...so I go off for what appeared to be no fucking reason at all.

After hanging up with the doctor, I started to feel a little better until about 30 seconds later because it's 7:30 AND I'M STILL IN FUCKING NEW JERSEY.

The great mercy of 7:57 comes around and I finally arrive in Delaware. Sweet Merciful Dela...FUCK FUCK FUCK

Halfway up the bridge, I am in fucking stopped traffic because of the toll. I get through the toll and 45 minutes later, at roughly 8:45, I'm stopped on a highway off and on, like I have been for the past 45 minutes. Eventually, I actually make it through the next toll and into Maryland I finally am where the road is sure to ope...FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

EVEN WORSE THAN FUCKING DELAWARE

and stuck in traffic I remain.

At this point, I'm pretty terrified of everything going on. I've left about 5 knuckle marks in the interior roof of my car. At one point, I punched the steering wheel and might brights turned on. I was screaming so loud that I was convinced I was having an out of body experience. I have no idea what the fuck was going on and all I wanted was out of the fucking car...or for someone to fucking kill me.

So I'm freaking the fuck out and I'm getting nervous because the last thing I need now is to get in an accident. I decide that I hate everyone on the road but in particular, anyone from Delaware or Massachusetts. Delaware because these people brake for literally no reason. Mass because these people just drive side by side with other assholes from Mass. What a fucking pain. I decide that all I want to do is bump every one of these cars off the road in hopes that they die in a fiery death and entertain myself along the way.

Anyway, I think it's clear that I'm pretty much out of control at this point and I need to stop driving. I consider pulling off and staying in a hotel for the night but that would just mean that I would sit in morning traffic and I would kill myself before doing that. So I try to continue calmly. That lasted for 10 seconds.

At this point, I have no inner monologue and there is not one sentence that doesn't contain both the word fuck and the word faggot. Not nice words but they were flying out and about...at some points I would apologize to cars for calling them such names.

So it's now 9:45 and I haven't hit Baltimore. Traffic will go and then it will stop but I remain consistently pissed the fuck off...UNTIL...I finally reach the moment where I go too far.

So I'm stopped in the left lane as the middle and right lane are going by us at about 10 MPH. The car in front of my puts their blinker on and it blinks for a good minutes, which feels more like 30. Other cars have slowed down to let this asshole in but the car won't do it. Our lane is not moving, but people are letting it happen and this car just won't move in. Finally, our lane starts to creep and this car still hasn't made it in the next lane with a car stopped to let the car in so I take supreme action. I pull the old drive into the shoulder around the car in front of you and then cut that car off in the left lane as well as the car in the middle lane. I didn't even look. I knew I was in front of the car originally in front of me but had no idea what was in the middle lane. It was at this point that I could hear nothing and braced for an impact that never came.

I thought I was going to get jacked right in the middle of the car and cause a massive accident. I have no idea why I did what I did but even less of an idea why I didn't get hit. I had no reason to think this would work and am not sure right now how I got away with it.

But after this, I was toast...fortunately, the road opened up soon there after and I was able to drive no slower than 45 for the rest of the trip.

Depart New Jersey at 4:05 for a destination 3.5 hours away.
Arrive Columbia, Md at 10:30 pm, 6 hours and 25 minutes after leaving.
Depart Columbia, Md. at 10:50 pm, arrive Washington, DC at 11:30 pm.

12 hours and 15 minutes since the road trip started. Over 7 hours after I left from Jersey for what should have been a 3.5 to 4 hour drive. Someone fucking shoot me.

Things I learned from this experience:

1. I am not driving more than 1 hour away on the east coast ever again. I've added California to this rule as well.
2. People who live in North Dakota, Wyoming and other abandoned states are smarter than me because they don't deal with this type of misery.
3. Never start your day on Elm St. Just an all around stupid idea.
4. Don't ask your boy who has a 1 track mind for Atlantic City for directions when within 2 hours of said destination.

Along this path towards AC, I did debate just going there (I think I was less than a half hour away when I finally turned around) and sitting at a table and getting wasted. Then I remembered I had a bottle of vodka in the car and debated drinking that. Then I just kept driving and decided I didn't need a dwi to go with the worst case of road rage I've ever experienced.

Today at work, every time I did something, I thought about my experience in traffic. I couldn't and still can't get this out of my mind. It was horrible. I'm serious about this driving time thing. I'm not driving more than an hour at a time ever around here again. Only if it's like 4 in the morning but if we stop at anything on the highway that isn't a toll, I'm snapping and killing everything I see.

So I feel kind of better but I'm still going to kill New Jersey. I was never one of the anti Jersey kids and I would sometimes stand up for Jersey. Now, however, now I'm like FUCK JERSEY. FUCK JERSEY, FUCK DELAWARE, FUCK NORTH MARYLAND AND FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK you holiday traffic. you are gay.