Commute from Hell

OK. So this is my commute every day. It's a little over 60 miles each way. I know. Crazy, right? But most days it's not bad. I go in most days in a vanpool, so the driving is shared, and it's not as stressful. Along with the fact that I travel quite a bit (and so am not in the office), I have managed to survive the commutes.

Then came along, December 8, 2005. The first big snow storm of the season. 40 of the 60 mile expressway is under construction. I left office at 3:30p. Want to guess how long it took me to get home? Go on. Don't read further, but think of a number. 5 hours? Nope. 7 hours? Nope. 8 hours? Nope. 9 hours? Yeap. Can you believe it? Nine hours! I would be hopping mad if I didn't think this was a story out of some parallel universe. It beats the one time a friend of mine and I took six hours driving around the Peripherique in Paris trying to find our hotel. Boy, that's almost a story worth telling. But back to this commute. Here I was just trying to get home. There are really no good explanations why it took so long. No accidents, no spin-outs... Just people driving 5 miles/hour. If it wasn't so cold, it might have made a nice walk home. The things we do to put food on the table...