Bleeping Traffic

Today was my move from my sister's to our daughter's.  I found what looked to be a really straight-forward route.  Ought to be a piece of cake, and bring me onto I-80 in the outside lane, ready to exit.

Oh what a cluster!  Somewhere north of San Rafael traffic got very thick.  I mean really heavy.  It was stop and creep.  I got off to get some gas so I wouldn't run out partway across the Richmond Bay Bridge.  I wanted to pee and get some food, but the vibe at the McDonald's and the A&W wasn't right and they were very crowded so I just got back on the freeway.  I got off the freeway at 6:05 and back on minutes later.  From there the traffic was terrible, even for the Bay Area.  At the end of a half hour I'd gone almost three miles.  At the end of an hour and 45 minutes I'd gone 5 miles.  What should have been a two hour drive (according to MapQuest) tuned into a five hour drive!

And the language!  There was one gal who was not happy about how long it was taking to merge, so she decided to make people get out of her way.  It's "bleeping merge?  Bleeping let people merge.  It's bleeping merge!"  I'm sure most of you can imagine the word I'm bleeping.  Then it turned out she didn't really want to just merge, she wanted to get from the outside incoming lane to the inside lane of a 3-4 lane freeway.  Once she bullied the first drive by hanging out the window and screaming at them, she plowed all the way across traffic.

I tend to be more laid back and will let the occasional driver in front of me.  I don't let in the ones who race to the end of the merge land, then insist on being in front of me.  I just "don't see" them.  Today I was yelled at.  I had windows down since it was actually cool once I got that far south.  A pickup with a horse trailer was pulling alongside on my left, people were waving, so I eased back to let them in.  With the windows down I could hear the driver behind me, and probably the passengers, too, yelling NO! at me.  Nothing they could do about it.  The were disgusted enough with me that they zoomed to the outer lane and got ahead of us.  I did not, however, let the companion truck and horse trailer in front of me.  One at a time is enough.

So, enough for tonight - enough traffic, enough hours in the drivers seat enough rude people.  I'm hoping tomorrow will be a smooth ride out of California, back toward Montana.