Getting to work...or not.

I am a bit frazzled this morning. It’s taken me 2.5 hours to get to work. Now before I rant any further, let me give you a brief overview of my weekly commute to and from work. My job doesn’t have ample parking on site and therefore most employees have to park at the various off site parking locations. Living in Alexandria, the closest parking garage to me is Union Station which is EXACTLY 14 miles away from my house. The drive from my house is about 30 minutes in moderate traffic (but taking my awesome driving skills and Maxi into consideration, it can take me around 20 minutes to get there at times). I then catch the shuttle which runs every 10 minutes or 20, depending on which stop you catch it at. The drive from the last stop to my job is between 10 and 15 minutes depending on rush hour traffic.

Cut to “rainy” days (and I use the word rainy very very loosely). I just can’t wrap my mind around how traffic becomes such a nightmare at the least amount of precipitation. I have a few theories as to why this happens:

1. People think they (as well as their cars) are salt and they’re afraid of melting?
2. 95% of MARYLAND drivers are idiots- but that’s a given on any day.
3. Someone, I’m assuming the government, issues everyone with cars on rainy days.
4. There is a special place that only opens on rainy days and therefore people must get to this place? Kind of a you-snooze-you-loose situation. Gotta drop everything you’re doing and go to this special place or else you are out of luck.
5. People are really fascinated by rain while driving and really want to take it all in so they drive as slowly as possible not to miss a thing.

To make matters worse, I forgot to fill my tank before I hit the road and of course the low gas indicator lit up. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue but as my luck will have it, I didn’t have my GPS with me which lead to immediate panic because I had no idea where the nearest gas station was! I then said a silent prayer- actually I said many prayers and the Good Lord heard my prayers. So 2.5 hours and 14 miles later, I am now at work. I just pray that rest of my day week is uneventful.

*Stepping off soap box *