Thankful....

Living in the Washington DC area, at some point, you will have to deal with rush hour traffic and gridlock.

Since late 2006 I have had the pleasure and benefit of working 7 miles from home. I never even have to get on an interstate highway. I am blessed. I appreciate that. It makes life so much more pleasant.

Yesterday I got a reminder of how bad traffic can be. I needed to travel to Beltsville, Maryland from Gainesville, VA. My projected arrival time was sometime around 8:15 to 8:30. Being a former commuter, I smartly allowed 2 hours and left my house at 6:15. Good Googlie Mooglie....there was an accident at the Rest Stop on I66. It shut the road down for over an hour, allowing on lane to pass. Talk about a mess. Every possible artery heading north was at a crawl. There was nothing to do but endure. I had to make a pit stop at the office to make my bladder gladder and got back on the road.

The time to go 50 miles.

3 hours.

I got to the meeting 15 minutes late. Not a huge deal. I called ahead, but still....insanity.

Made me REALLY appreciate my commute. I don't know how I commuted all those years. Life is too short and most people just accept it as a fact of life. To me, this thief of quality of life is almost important as our national economy and jobs - BUILD SOME ROADS PEOPLE! PUT IN MORE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. HAVE COMPANIES NEVER HEARD OF TELECOMMUTING?

Don't even try to say to me if we build more roads they will build more houses. They are going to build more houses regardless. Build the roads to get us to work - the people are HERE...look around you as you sit and creep along in traffic, every single day of the week. That is YOUR time ticking away...your life being wasted doing nothing but sitting in your car. It's bad for people, it wastes gas and it's bad for the environment.

Quit spending my tax dollars on ridiculous things and improve the infrastructure and peoples lives and hey....just think, you'd be putting some people to work.

Gee....how smart would that be?