Technology Reflections

Today, while driving to my parent’s house for Thanksgiving I hit traffic. It wasn’t holiday traffic, but an accident. I knew it was an accident from one of those electronic traffic signs. This one said something to the effect of

ALL LANES CLOSED AHEAD

Great! NOT! And the next exit came up too fast for me to get over one lane and take it.

So now I’m stuck with whatever is causing all the lanes to be closed somewhere up ahead of me. I decide that I need to know what is going o, so I turn down the GooGooDolls that I’ve been blasting on the ipod and pick up my cellphone and call my father. He hasn’t heard about any accidents but he says he’ll see what he can find out. We hang up. I turn off the ipod and turn on my XMRadio to see if they have anything on the traffic station. They do – but they say one lane is getting through up ahead and it’s the lane I’m in! he cell phone rings and it’s Dad. He’s looked on the Internet and found the problem, but they still say all lanes are blocked. I still don’t know what i’ll find up ahead, but whatever it is, is reported to be just beyond the next exit, so I still have one more chance to get off the road before I’m stuck for good. Now I turn off XM and put on a local radio station to see what they say. They just have music on. Then I try an AM station that my mother yelled in the background while I was on the phone with dad that she says has traffic. They are reporting the accident and I think they say it’s off on the left shoulder. (I heard that on one station) Things are looking better for me – I’m still in the right lane. But now I’m coming up to the exit that is just south of the reported accident. Do I get off, do I stay on? and to complicate things – it’s an exit only lane! As I approach the exit the traffic seems to be moving a bit better, so I decide to stay on the highway and risk it. In the end, staying on the highway was the right decision and I never even saw what the problem was! I lost about 30 mins in travel time, but I wasn’t in a rush. I put the GooGooDolls back on and just rocked out

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