Punctuality

I hate rush hour traffic. So it's actually a good thing that I don't get to work as early as some of my co-workers because if I leave my apartment at an earlier time, I'll still get to work at the same time because of it.

So, my company is NW of where I live and there are two ways that I usually switch between:

• the more local way, and
• the freeway

Both are basically the same distance and both first go north, then west. Actually, there's not much difference between the two routes now that I think about it. They both take 20 minutes. And there's traffic on both. (The freeway's probably slightly longer than the local route with slightly less traffic.)

This morning, I decided to take the local route. Since I'm still trying to explore my routes and find a quicker way, I always time how long it takes me to get to work. So this morning, I was doing well on time for about half the way but then, when I got on the main road that my company is on (the west-going part), the traffic got really, really bad (think first scene in Office Space). 

As soon as I switched to a lane that was moving, it stopped moving! This happened a few times.  And then there are times where I would see the light turn green and yet the car in front of me wouldn't move. 

So friggin frustrating.

Finally, I had enough. I decided to take a detour--a side road that is parallel to the main road, but that bypasses the traffic. But I forgot that after a certain point, the section of roads to the right of the main road gets very tangly and twisty (before that part, they're all pretty much like a grid). So, I spent 5 minutes trying to get to the road that was parallel to the main road and guess where I ended up?

On the main road. Before the point where I had turned. x_x

What the hell? Now I'm definitely going to be late for my meeting.

So I puffed and scoffed and stayed in the slow moving endless line of cars until I FINALLY arrived at work.