Oh My Aching Back...

Yup, traffic sucked on Thursday...
(Source)

Departed home station at roughly 0900 local, hit the tanker (Shell for automobile fuel, Dunkin' Donuts for Sarge fuel) between 0900 and 0930. We were firmly outbound and on track by 0930. The navigator¹ predicted about a six and a half hour trip.

I want a shot of whatever it is she's drinking.

"Hey, let's take the Merritt Parkway." she suggested.

I demurred, the last time we went that way (in late May) it had sucked. Badly. Lots of traffic, granted no big trucks, but everyone seemed to have just gotten their learner's permit. As pretty as that route is, it also sucks rather badly once you hit the city. You might get routed to the George Washington Bridge, you might wind up going through the Lincoln Tunnel.

Bottom line, I stayed on I-95 through Connecticut.

Then the navigator suggested, "Let's head north at Exit such-and-such and take the Tappen Zee Bridge." (Officially it has another name, which I refuse to use. That whole family can go suck on a grenade as far as I'm concerned.)

I thought to myself, "Why not, 'tis a pretty route?" Though it adds about ten miles to the trip, the last time we went that way traffic from the western end of that bridge down through New Jersey hadn't been all that bad. But wait, that was December.

When we got near the exit to head in that direction, traffic was backed up bumper to bumper to go that route, whereas I-95, though heavily laden with big trucks, was still moving rather well. So I said, "Eff it, I-95 and the GW it is. I'm rolling the dice today."

From all the information I had available to me, there was no good route through New York, Traffic seemed to be jammed everywhere. At least on I-95 it was a straight shot over the bridge and into New Jersey. I've done the other approaches where if you twitch or one idiot driver cuts you off, you're in downtown and scrambling to find your way out. Nope, head down, "Hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle."

Two hours later...

Yup, about two hours to get from Point A to Point B, roughly 8 miles it is, I'll let you calculate our average speed...

(Source)

But here's the thing, everyone was more or less forced to stay in their lane. People were actually, and this stunned me, waving at me to ask, yes ask, if they could squeeze in front of me. People were being (again, stunned I was) polite and accommodating. It was a very low stress situation and "what the heck," I'm on vacation.

Perhaps the gods of the road were smiling upon me as at one point I saw a trucker trying to get into the next lane over, his turn signal had been on for at least a mile, people were ignoring him. So I took action, there being a gap in traffic I pulled into the lane he sought and promptly slowed down to give him a gap to move into. He signaled his appreciation and we rolled on.

Courtesy can sometimes be its own reward.

Traffic in New Jersey was...

Well, it was New Jersey. Going from light speed down to the pace of a heavily laden grenadier then back again. But we got across in fine shape, Delaware and Maryland were nothing out of the ordinary, in fact the traffic felt almost non-existent after our experience on the Cross Bronx Expressway. (There wasn't anything "express" about it, seldom is.)

But we eventually arrived after a nine and a half hour trip. So much for the navigator's confident prediction of a trip three hours shorter than that. But hey, it's math, you're going this fast, you have this far to go, as time equals distance divided by speed (sort of), she has to make her predictions without knowledge of either traffic or road conditions.

So I don't blame her, she's a machine.

But at the end of the trip, my derriere was rather tender.

But we're in Maryland, celebrating the youngest's first full trip around the solar system and having a wondrous time.

Cheers!

¹ The Waze App on my phone. For which I use a female voice, easier to comprehend I'm told.