Road Rage Thy Name Is Angry Gay Man
As I get older it seems I become more of a sucker for lost souls and more of an ultra bitch whenever I am behind the wheel of a car. Today as you might have guessed was even WORSE than yesterday..
The commute time is picking up a lot. Gone are the days of the 30-minute, bumper-to-bumper traffic. Now it's 45-minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. And starting next week and after it should be climbing to a solid hour. Oh, joy!!!.
But yes, so I sat in aggravating traffic. For those of you unfamiliar with my commute, I have to take Route 50 from VA into DC. My crossover point to get into the District is the Roosevelt Bridge, which is VERY packed and dotted with exit ramps, so it is always a jammed zoo. The ramp to get onto the Roosevelt Bridge from Route 50 goes from 2 lanes to 1 lane. I don't know who the brilliant idiot was who thought this scheme up, but if I ever meet him or her I am going to throttle them. Because it goes from 2 lanes to 1 means that everyone in the left lane has to merge into the right lane. This results in a MASSIVE bottle necking on the ramp that stretches all the way down Route 50.
Well, this morning I had gotten into the right hand lane ahead of time so I wouldn't have to worry about merging. Now you'd think that the majority of the commuters from VA would know this by now and would just get into the right lane and wait patiently. But no. Instead all the people in the left lane run it right up until the very end, which delays the traffic even more and just pisses people off in general. So I'm sitting in the right lane and finally get up to where the left lane runs out. There are 2 cars in the left lane next to me. I let the first one in and start to move forward so that the second guy can get in behind me. This is how it is supposed to work, one-for-one and all that shit. This FUCKER decides he is going ahead of me no matter what and continues to keep driving forward. I knew better than to get pissed and play chicken with him, but damn it his time was not more important than mine and he could just damn well wait his turn like the rest of us. So I pulled up, look him in the face and shake my head to tell him, "No." That motherfucker just sneered at me and kept going. So all the way up the ramp we road the bumper of the guy in front of us, damn near causing an accident. I was madder than Hell by the time he FINALLY decided to concede and stopped his car and got behind me (BTW the person behind me was deliberately leaving room for this Jack Ass to get in, too!!).
I was seriously in a rage by the time I got to the office. It did finally subside after an hour but it was not a good way to start my morning. Fortunately I still had that bloody manual to work on, so I threw myself into trying to finish it. I didn't finish it but the day went on without much of a problem (except Princess J's continued use of her obnoxious speaker phone) so I can't complain there too much..
I left the office around 5:30 pm or so and picked up my car from the garage. The exit to the garage dumps out onto the left lane of a one-way street. I need the far right lane as my turn is literally at the next intersection (about half a block down). If I pull out into the left lane it is nearly impossible to get into the right lane in time, so I always wait and just pull out and cross all three lanes at once. This isn't generally a problem as people tend to leave room to let the cars from the garage exits. I sat there for 10 MINUTES trying to get in! 10 MINUTES!!! The garage was backed up with angry commuters who couldn't even get out and I was mad enough to kill. I finally had to just pull out and block two lanes of traffic and cut someone off just to get over, all the while screaming the most vulgar profanities at excessively high volumes. Worse still the windows were down so every Washingtonian on that block, be they in cars or on foot, heard my demented psychotic rantings and got VERY scared. When I realized that they had heard me I became very embarrassed and then angrier because I had become a public spectacle. *Sigh*.
BTW, while I was working on a tech manual this afternoon, Mr. Orange Cap, who stood me up Saturday, sent me an instant message. I had been pretty diligent in my work so I took a little break to chat with him for a few minutes. He had sent me an apology e-mail a few days early (he got lost on his way to the station which is why he didn't show up) and wants to try and meet again. So I agreed to meet him at the same place, same time, this Saturday with the condition that if he stands me up again I won't give him a third chance. In a way now I wish I had just said in my e-mail to him that he blew it the first time around and to just leave me alone. I really don't want to meet him, but I feel guilty because he seems nice enough and just naive and suffering from cultural comprehension. God I am such a magnet and sucker for lost lambs. I think there is an important lesson I need to learn here...
