The shortest distance between two points is NOT a straight line....

[captainsblog]

I made it to that Palmyra appointment, early this afternoon.  In earlier stops, I filed a document in a clerk's office containing this lovely sight in the lobby-



(I bet Van Cliburn used to run into this ALLLL the time....)

- and saw this oddity on the whiteboard in a friend's conference room-


-all the weirder because I had just linked to this Youtube video, in response to this bizarre series of LOLCATtish images, not a day earlier:

As if that wasn't enough, though, I had to leave from the potential new client's place and head to an existing client's new place back here B-lo way, several miles south of the original one. It made sense, in a bizarro universe kind of way, for me to take Routes 5 and (continuing, after their Geneseeish split) 20 to get from one to the other. It was a pretty fall day with nice foliage out there, Cameron still has my EZPass, and I wasn't in that much of a hurry, so why not?

Here's why not. In the ensuing almost three hours, my 60-odd miles of forward progress were stopped or at least significantly slowed, at least once, by each of the following impediments:

- a freight train
- a much-stopping school bus
- a slow-moving semi
- a construction zone involving an extended detour (two of these, eventually)
- a construction zone minus the detour but adding a lengthy single-lane with one of these "follow me" pilot vehicles which waits for a quarter-mile accumulation of traffic before leading its chosen band through the zone
- a fire truck
- a lit-up police car
- a funeral cortege

All that was missing was the Cranky Old Man in a Hat going 30 in a 55 zone with his left blinker on the whole time.

Tomorrow will be better. For one thing, I ain't going ANYWHERE outside my own zip code (and hey guess what? The closest approach to the 90 from our house had a sign on IT, too, saying it will be closed for construction starting next week.)

Comments

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

I've just flashed on that opening scene in Office Space, where the old guy with the walker passes Our Hero caught in a traffic jam.