I drive 50 miles one way to work. Fortunately, I get to work from home twice a week to help break up the monotony. The one thing that I have noticed, however, having done this for a couple years, is that traffic stinks. It never fails, you get on the expressway (did you catch that? I said expressway) to get to work and you end up going slower than you were going on the side streets, and that’s only when traffic is moving. It can tend to really grate on your nerves moving at the speed of stop when you are trying to get to work. And it never fails that the lane next to you is always moving at a good clip as if taunting you, at least until you get into that lane, then it stops and the lane you just left starts to move. For the longest time I wondered what on earth could possibly cause this, because when you finally reach the point where traffic finally starts to move again you look around for the disruption and there is nothing there. I’ve often said that, just once I would like to reach the point of distraction and see some guy standing in the road with a tinfoil hat on his head and a sign that says “The aliens are coming, do you know where your disruptor rifle is?” Just so I could say “Now that’s a good reason.”

I finally found out that traffic has a rubber band effect. One guy tapping his breaks one mile ahead can bring the cars one mile behind to a near stop. And if there was an accident earlier, it takes two hours for traffic to finally get moving again. Isn’t that crazy? I’ll take the nut with the tinfoil hat and the sign, over rubber traffic any day. At least the nut is entertaining. So next time your stuck in rubber traffic, ask yourself “Do I know where my disruptor rifle is?” and hopefully it will put a smile on your face and make the trip more bearable.