Not to crow or jeer, but my commute was possibly better than yours. It's the advantage of living reasonably close to work - an eleven-minute midday jaunt when roads are dry and I lead-foot it just a little, a twenty-minute cruise in the morning up the river of Park Avenue. Things always thicken past Lake, especially if the city has erected one of its LANE CLOSED FOR NO DISCERNIBLE REASON signs, but the lights aren't timed by a sadist, and the traffic never clots to the point where you watch the lights change three times before it's your turn to get on with life.
Monday morning was different: new snow and freezing rain made for thick slick streets, and one lane was clotted by an enormous plow that wasn't doing anything. It trundled along, blade up. This seemed off: if you have a blade, and you are a municipal plow, why wouldn't you plow everywhere you go? Because they have their own routes, of course. It's not as if everyone goes off as they please, looking for gold rings or magic mushrooms or other power-ups. But if you're going to be stuck behind a plow, you feel as though you ought to get something out of it.
Minor complaint. I enjoyed was the slow pace. No hell-mell race; no thrill-jockies blasting through a red. It seemed everyone had reached the same conclusion: okay, we're late this morning, and they were resigned to it. Slow and nice and steady. Civilized. Made me think I should load up the iPod with the sound of horses' hooves, as long as we're heading in at a clop-clop pace. Of course, I wouldn't feel this way if I had to take the highways. After fifteen minutes on the highway without going over 10 MPH, I want to turn into Optimus Prime and just walk over everything. This was not in my Honda's option package. Next car, yes.
