Just a little late for work this morning, was not really late just later than I normally arrive. The boss beat me to the office which does not happen very often. I told him “it was the traffic.”
That excuse has worked for me in the past. When in Kansas City, it was the narrowing of the highway at the “Grandview Triangle” that caused morning and evening delays to my daily trek to and from the Board of Trade building. Later highway 400 or interstates 75 and 85 would hamper my movement around Atlanta. Even highway 92 from Woodstock Ga. to Alpharetta would cause me delays almost every morning. If the boss beat me to work there I’d just say” Highway (inset today’s choice) was a mess” which would always be met with nods of agreement and sympathy. Trucks, cars, motorcycles, and to my amazement even bicycles filled the roadways in Atlanta. Every morning, five days a week, fifty two weeks per year I’d camp long enough in my car for my daily Starbucks coffee to get cold.
My commute today is 6 blocks, no traffic lights between me and the office, and if I am careful to choose my path, as I did in Atlanta, I can make it to work with only two stop signs to slow my trek. I do have to cross a highway, our main artery through town. Most mornings I can coast through the stop sign, cross the highway, and enter the parking lot without so much as touching the breaks.
However it is wheat harvest in SW Kansas. Combines and trucks provide our semi-annual traffic jams, wheat harvest in summer, and corn in the fall. Tractor trailers pulling giant straw eating monsters, semi’s pulling trailers full of golden grain and every day commuters crowd our highway. Our own “triangle” where the roadway narrows from four lanes to two just at the driveway of my office on the west edge of town, right at my stop sign where I crossed this morning. Traffic was heavy but there was no traffic report on the radio to offer me an alternate path. So I set there.
I set there watching for a break in the traffic as a Bike Across America participant taking advantage of the cool Kansas morning entered today’s parade and brought to remembrance my daily commutes in Atlanta. I set there wishing for a Starbucks, wishing for our rumored Wal-Mart, wishing there was more entertainment, wishing our church was bigger, wishing friends and family all lived closer. As the traffic cleared a path for me I took another sip of my coffee and moved away from the stop sign slowly. No one tooted their horn in anger or sped around me in disgust. I smiled; if I had all of my wishes the traffic would be worse, drivers would be rude, and my coffee would be cold.
No nods of agreement, no sympathy from my boss, only laughter. Don’t really need that Starbucks, but I got to find a better excuse!
David
