Longest Commute

Okay, I'm sure someone out there has had a longer commute but 5 hrs is a record for me all caused by the weather system that went through our area this afternoon that produced a mix of snow/sleet/freezing rain/rain. The area I was traveling through basically had freezing rain. I was doing okay until I got about 20 miles from home even though I had passed numerous accidents along the way...so many that I eventually lost count. And they weren't just one or two car accidents...they were 6 and 7 car accidents, accidents with cars flipped over. It was amazing. Thankfully, it didn't look like anyone was hurt in the accidents I passed. It took me about an hour to get within 20 miles from home...normally takes me an hour to get home so I didn't think that was too bad considering the weather...but that's when it all changed. I got on the main road to come home and came to a stand still. Move .1 mile in an hour, then another .1 mile in the next hour and finally another .1 mile in the next hour...so in 3 hours, I went .3 miles. Not very good progress. This was all due to extreme icing conditions on a bridge up in front of me. Finally about 3 hrs 45 minutes into the ordeal, they reopened my side of the road to allow traffic over the bridge...they kept the other side of the road closed. When I finally made it to the bridge, I could see why they had closed it as it was still extremely icy even after all the salting/sanding they done in the 3+ hrs that we had been waiting. This is certainly something I hope I don't need to repeat anytime soon. And I was being tortured the entire time I was in the car because a coworker had given me some eggrolls that she had made...problem was they weren't cooked so I couldn't even eat them while I was stuck in traffic. How cruel is that??

There was one humerous part the entire ordeal. After talking with my mom, I found out that a close family friend was also stuck in the same traffic that I was. Turns out she was right beside me in the next lane. Out of all the thousands of cars that were on the road what are the odds that we would have ended up right beside each other. Not sure why, but it made us each feel a little better to know that we weren't stuck in that traffic nightmare alone.