monkey nonsense

so yesterday, i left work at around 5:45. it should’ve taken me about 30 minutes to get to west falls church. this 30 minutes already accounts for rush hour traffic typically.

got to the station and there was soooo many people just standing around at the bottom of the escalators! i stood around for 15 minutes, waiting for the crowd to slowly move down but it never did! finally, i walked up to the metro gates to see what was up. they weren’t letting anyone go down to the platform because it was too crowded and unsafe. apparently a train had a problem in the tunnel and because the tunnels in the DC metro are DUMB, no trains could get around it. so more and more trains kept getting backed up. this one train caused a backup for a few miles… basically, the metro was clogged from foggy bottom (the stop right after me… i wonder if they updated that message later on to include my stop because nothing was happening at my stop either) to courthouse… 3 stops AND spanning DC and VA! the station manager announced that trains were coming to pick up riders but it’s not as if the trains could reach the platform! it got that backed up.

i thought about walking to the station after me (foggy bottom), but then i probably would run into the same problem. i thought of walking to the station before me (mcpherson square), but then i’d get stuck in the tunnel! i thought of taking the red line (because i can walk to that station) to transfer to the yellow line, take that down to the pentagon, transfer to the blue line and ride to rosslyn and then transfer back to the orange. but rosslyn was one of the stations right in the middle of the logjam… so it’s not as if that’d detour would work out.

i ended up taking a bus to the ballston metro… but DC area traffic ended up slowing the bus down too! i didn’t get to west falls church until 7:30!

THEN this morning, i went to the reston south parking lot to catch the bus a little before 8. usually i get there with a few minutes to spare and the bus is just sitting there. today was no different. the bus was waiting there as i pulled in. i got a phone call from my roommate telling me i forgot my lunch (d’oh!! AGAIN!). then i hung up with her and get out of my car… literally got 2-3 steps away from the car, when the bus starts to go! i wave at it!! and he just keeps going! so i run back to my car and drive maniacally out of the parking lot. i was stuck behind the bus at the red light leaving the parking lot. after we turned on to reston parkway though, i passed him and sped up to 70. i turned into the park (between the main street i live off of and the parking lot) and parked my car there. i think i hit the turn at about 60 mph… my car actually made a screeching sound and i actually swerved to not run off the road. then i ran across a field, cut through some trees and got to the bus stop (at the corner of the main street i live off of… it’s about a 10-15 minute walk from my house so really the park was the closest place to park) just as the bus was pulling up.

… then the bus proceeded to get stuck in traffic on the dulles toll road (it was SOOO backed up this morning! ALL lanes! including HOV!) and i didn’t get in until 9:15.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 10:12 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.