This week’s massive highway jam in China made me strangely happy, and I’m feeling pretty guilty about that. I get fidgety in slow traffic and am cheered whenever I’m gliding down the interstate and see that the opposite lane is backed up, simply because I’m not stuck on that side.
It’s schadenfreude, I know. Taking pleasure from the misfortune of others. It’s a silly reaction for a couple of reasons. Slow traffic on the other side of the interstate can easily trigger a gawker slowdown on my side, which can turn into a real smugness dampener.
And then there’s the air.
As I drive past any line of backed up cars here in the U.S. I can almost see a cloud of frustration swirling around the vehicles. Or is that exhaust? People tend not to turn off their motors, even if they’re going nowhere. Lungs ache at the thought of the air quality along China’s 10 day, 60 mile long stoppage. Add to that the fact that many of the bumper-to-bumper trucks were carrying coal to feed the country’s rapidly growing energy needs, and its easy to see this Chinese jam as both a hydrocarbon generating and hydrocarbon generated monster.
And it’s back!
What do you do when you’re stuck for days in the middle of a thicket of overloaded coal trucks? Get out, play cards, sit in the shade, talk with your fellow sufferers, sleep and pay ticket scalper-level prices for food and water. And make up limericks.
One summer, en route to Beijing
The road was a go-nowhere thing.
When the drivers got out
To see what was about
Their new settlement lasted ‘til Spring.
How do you handle gridlocked traffic?
Trail Baboon 
In traffic, I’m not a reactor
But in Blackhoof, a jam’s not a factor
The road is our own
Except when hay’s mown
Then “jam” is a wagon and tractor
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Well done Barb, and early in the morning too!
Hope Alba’s dosing days are soon over. Feel for you on dumping all that milk-ouch!
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thanks, MIG – and now that the worms are leaving, Alba and Dream are making more milk than ever. next milk kept is Sept. 8. i keep remembering those NFO days when farmers were dumping milk in protest. this is in protest of worms, i guess.
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Nicely done barb, you’re a clear lark — unlike me who groaned and requested Mr. MN to please not read a magazine in bed so I could sleep in this AM. I also finally had a chance to visit your blog with the dear goat pictures. Thank you for making those available!
How long are the worms? (Am I allowed to ask such things? Academic curiosity must be appeased!)
My new commute is 4 minutes door-to-door past a very large blue city lake.
As a child stuck in the morning gridlocks of Kuala Lumpur on the way to school, I got carsick fairly often. So the answer to this morning’s question is, “not well — avoid through whatever means necessary!”
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Rise and Shine Babooners:
Beautiful day! Already picked my tomatoes, 1 pepper and some raspberries. (barb from bh–I did “dump” the raspberries with bugs. But no worms!). I’m also enjoying the new internet service. I spent last night switching from website to website, whooping every time it worked. And I did not have to unplug the router, wait 5 minutes, and plug it in again every 15 minutes! What a luxury. It felt like a cyber-traffic jam.
Meanwhile. I don’t like traffic jams and arrange my work schedule around them. While I walk the dog and work out I’ll try to compose a traffic limerick. Surely something rhymes with “494 in Bloomington” where I encounter traffic jams.
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“Remington” was the first thing that came to mind. Doesn’t allow much flexibility with the rest of the rhyme, however.
Rhymes are at least a two-person effort for me.
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one things for sure youre not zooming from
just shut the door and start croonong son
etc…
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Like in Blackhoof, gridlock is not really known out in western ND. I was brave and drove in Ontario and Quebec on our vacation and was fouled up in bumper to bumper, three lane traffic at 11:30pm on the 401 just west of Toronto. I have never seen so many cars and trucks driving so slowly so late at night in my life. We ended up going 10 km per hour for about an hour until we got past a lane closure near Hamilton. I am used to driving almost 80 MPH in ND (that’s 130 KPH), and the sedate 100 KPH on Canadian highways was hard to get used to. I also found driving in Montreal really fun, and not at all like the craziness we had been warned about by our graduate school friends.
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I have been lucky enough, for the most part, to work and live places where I could take side roads to and from, and avoid traffic jams. I had little patience for crossing Hwy 62 at Penn when they were working on the bridge and I got slowed down by 5…whole…minutes…crossing north to get home. We also plan our trips to and from my aunt’s house in Brainerd to avoid the jams that happen heading that direction (no leaving on Friday after 3 pm in the summer, Thanksgiving weekend means leaving before 3 pm on Wednesday and returning so that we can try to avoid the midday crunch around Maple Grove…)
There once was a girl who drove
But preferred to stay on the move
She hated to wait
And cursed her sad fate
When traffic made her curse, by jove
(Okay, the meter is off – forgive me…still on the first cup of coffee)
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Morning–
Rochester isn’t known for it’s traffic jams either… although there are a lot of pedestrians around the clinic and it would be best for all of us behind you if you didn’t try to make a left hand turn at lunch hour.
I seem to do better driving the country roads too… not doing 80 MPH mind you… and then that one grain truck struggling to do 50 on the hills is the annoyance…
Driving Solo I like Best
Somewhere to avoid the Rest
Tractor and digger
Bigger and Bigger
SMV sign not in Jest
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I have never really considered the Twin Cities to have traffic jams as such-seems there is always a way to get people routed off and around. I’ve been in slowdowns here, but never completely stopped.
Washington, DC was built to have traffic jams-it was originally designed as a walking city with green spaces at regular intervals, which are now the dreaded round-abouts (there are a couple in St Paul too, but I’ve encountered them at a leisurely, residential pace that doesn’t lead me to hold my breath). It was also built to be defensible in the late 18th century, which means that today, to get there from Northern Virginia, you must cross a bridge.
From time to time, someone decides this is an excellent opportunity to make a point. In the case I experienced, it was a gentleman who wanted custody of his children who stopped on “my” bridge and made explosive threats.
This was in the days before cell phones and WiFi, my children, and the radio was telling us nothing, so we all sat and speculated for 3 hours. People got their briefcases out of their trunks and tried to be productive. Not a bit of knitting did I have, and I am not sure if I even had a book on me. I just hoped to goodness the dentist’s office wouldn’t charge me for missing the appointment.
Eventually, we all got moving again, and I think we found out what had happened that night on the evening news.
Like you, MN in Sudbury, I have awful carsickness, but it does not seem to bother me when I am the driver. Sitting in those fumes must have been torture. Glad to hear you are making up for it with your current commute, which sounds like a bit of heaven.
Jacque, did some of your raspberries go moldy for awhile there? Very disheartening!
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The raspberries rested for awhile, but now they are producing again. The bugs are really active and prolific this year. If I don’t get out to pick in time, the bugs seem to go after the really ripe berries.
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Interesting about Washington DC’s weaknesses as a driver’s city.
Your reference to “sitting in fumes” reminds me of an infamous incident in New York where a great many cars were trapped in a tunnel. Traffic authorities wouldn’t let them move through for some reason that made sense to them, and meanwhile in the tunnel people were passing out because a freakish weather condition was trapping pollution at ground level.
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The Virginia Beach/Norfolk area has a few tunnels because of the big navy ships. You get into gridlock there because they limit the how many vehicles are allowed in because of the fumes.
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If oil drilling continues out here in the Bakken formation, increased oil traffic may lead to gridlock.
Western roads, so clear.
But what have we here?
Oil trucks and rigs
for us fuel-burning pigs,
spoiling the land so dear.
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I am so used to thinking of western N. Dakota as sparse, I had not thought of the traffic that the oil industry is making. Very interesting. You can also feed the new population with the fruits of the new garden!
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Good Mid Day to All,
I have fallen a little behind with my participation so it is closer to mid day than morning by this time. I would like to have a book to read if I got caught in a traffic jam, which isn’t too often. We check ahead to find out where the traffic jams might be, but it isn’t always possible to avoid them. I recently was delayed the better part of an hour on I35 going north due to construction. That wasn’t much fun but nothing like what they have in China.
There are few things more frustrating than
a traffic jam
I try to avoid them if I can
and if this doesn’t work as planned
then the car in front of me I might ram
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Remind me not to get in front of you in traffic, Jim!
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Traffic on 494 in Bloomington
When traffic is very congested
There is an art form that will best it.
The audio books
with really good hooks
transform the traffic to a joy quite festive.
Jacqueline Longfellow: she’s a poet
she doesn’t know it
her feet are Longfellows (a quote from my late father)
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well done uuummmmmmm
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I have a nephew out on the East coast who will call people if he’s stuck in traffic. And it’s always kind of a delight to be the ‘chosen one’ that day.
At risk of incriminating myself, I’ll state that I use the drive to M/SP from Rochester for calling friends and relatives. Sure makes the drive go faster…
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When the traffic I’m in gets to stopping
It’s down the exit ramp I am hopping.
Lived here enough days
To know lots of ways
For getting to where I am shopping.
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maybe publish your little secret detours for us 🙂
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You shouldn’t get me started, Barb… I use the West River Road a lot, which goes from north of downtown all the way down to Minnehaha Falls. Because there are only stop signs on it, I can get to somewhere near the Falls as quickly as taking the freeway and Hiawatha…
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I love(d) both river roads! Used to live right on East Lake & West River Pkwy opposite the Longfellow Grill. Good times. That was a 10-minute commute that was all-season beautiful.
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Ooohh, I envy your living right on the parkway, MN in S.
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thanks for the great limericks, All! fun reading.
MN in S – i am hoping to see a tape worm (also scientific curiosity 🙂 but i read that there’s not a big chance. more of a chance to see rice-like sections (containing eggs) that break off. uffda. and the whip worms are small (the other “guests” we are hosting). but i’m keeping my eyes open.
traffic has been sparse on our little lane today. Mike OTLH, our neighbor and farm advisor :-), hasn’t cut the field next to us yet (second crop). if he’s on the field, one would be well-advised to stay out of his way. when he did the first crop baling it was way dark one evening. i told him i saw deer legs and skunk tails hanging out of the bales – ha, ha. (btw: OTLH means “of the large hands” – Mike is a big guy. and his heart is as big as his hands.)
happy weekend!
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I have little experience commuting. I used to commute on freeways in winter, driving a Honda Civic back when that was a tiny car; and when you drive icy highways at freeway speeds next to 18-wheelers in such a car, commuting is a useful exercise in humility. I used to wonder if the truck drivers would even feel a bump through their steering wheels if they flattened me.
Give me the traffic problems of Cornucopia, the little town near my cabin. A black Lab named Rocky often sleeps in the main street in town. A traffic problem in Cornie consists of slowing down enough to drive around Rocky without waking him u p.
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Saturday Vignette: I was deep into cleaning the utility room, which collects dust all over the place behind and underneath everything and which makes me grumpy. The doorbell rang. Some pasty Bible thumper. I told him through the screen I was not interested. He grabbed the screen door handle to open the door and broke it.
Can I sue?
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Clyde – if you were the type of vindictive person out to get everyone who offended you, and you had a lawyer from Badger & Hackle, you could probably find a way to sue the pasty fellow. But you aren’t, you don’t and it’s definitely not in your gentle character to do such a thing.
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Er, um, cough, cough, hem and haw: Have I portrayed myself inaccurately on here. Wow.
His reaction: We were both sort of nonplussed, for one thing because the door would not open. He left and then later I saw him, and them, in our association (Efrafa) when I was bike riding. He avoided looking at me. It was just funny. I am late posting because I had to buy parts to fix it, after the room was cleaned.
My beliefs and any offense taken here: none taken. I am after all a former Lutheran pastor, not opposed to evangelism, well maybe door-to-door, which is really ineffective and is known, Barbara, to produce many quick and short-lived conversions, as do Billy Graham and similar crusades. What does anger me, but not in this instance, is the dull, pasty-white, only my truth is the truth of people like that. (I know his point of view when he gave me his literature a couple of years ago.) I would prefer the notion that the Faith is full of color, personality, sparkle, and a great range of approaches. There! Done on that issue forever on here. But I will one day have to tell you my great story of a door-to-door thumper, up north, which maybe I did once tell. Hmm?
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Was he at least sheepish and apologetic about what he’d done?
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clyde, you must have looked like you really needie saving.
cant you put on a show and do a devil worship rant or a muslim masque with your prayer floor facing east. help him to understand the choices and options available.
a soldier of god came a knocking
to save clyde fron sinfuly walking
but clyde didn’t wantto be saved
the road to heaven is well intention paved
he needs thupmer deturrants installed for path blocking
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and was waiting for your experienced comments below on the Chinese and gridlock.
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like,like,like
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Greetings! Long day at work … I avoid traffic at all costs. When I worked downtown Minneapolis, I always lived in a place where I could take the bus.
Clyde’s encounter with pasty Bible thumper reminded me of something we did with one of those encounters. This was sometime after marriage, but before kids (7 year span). Jim is quite congenial and far more chatty than I, so he invited them into apartment. We listened for a short while, then proceeded to share with them our beliefs, metaphysical ideas and philosophies that are far outside mainstream religion. They hustled for the door mighty quick when you turn the tables on them.
Another time, we decided to humor them by listening to their full spiel, read the Bible together and accepted Jesus into our life and were saved. {This is not meant to offend anyone who honors those beliefs — it’s just different from ours} They went away happy and we just continued along as we always did. We were sincere at the moment, but it just didn’t stick, I guess.
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I hope you guys remember to look over the posts from yesterday’s blog, as Tim breezes through about midnight and sprinkles interesting replies throughout. He seems to have the last word on some things …. :~)
Clyde – every time you insert your famous “Ah, but remember that the lawn is the highest expression of American culture,” I just laugh and marvel at the layers of irony, sarcasm and other literary conceits I don’t understand that are packed into that phrase. Of course, where you insert it just adds to the hilarity of the phrase. Just saying …
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Thanks. And, yes, tim did, as often, get in many fun last words last night.
Since you raised the lawn issue, I will do another vignette, which maybe shows some, but not all, the layers of meaning in my comment. I often on Saturdays ride through a beautiful cemetery on the bluffs here, a Catholic one by chance. I love cemeteries for many reasons, such as history. This one is beautiful just after sunrise as the sun shines below the trees boughs, all trimmed to about ten feet above ground. The sun makes infinite-length shadows of the tombstones across the rich green grass, another lawn, but calm and quiet except for the classical music from MPR in my ears. I often compose sermons on that ride, but none to do today.
Insight 1: in the center of the cemetery is a chapel surrounded by tombstones of priests and nuns, the priest sometimes a bit large and showy, the nuns always small and rather crumbly. In the lay persons’ portion of the cemetery are many large and very ostentatious monuments and stones. The nuns’ stones, placed for those who have for centuries done so much of the grunt work of that church with so little esteem and attention, especially the wonderful community here, are so humble in contrast. Kind of overwhelms me and uplifts me in regard to deeper meanings about humility in this faith I espouse.
Insight 2: on both sides of this cemetery are many very new and very expensive homes, in the $500,000 to over $1,000,000 range. The pioneers feared the instability of the bluffs I assume and made small use of them. The two major cemeteries in town are both on the bluffs, again I assume, because this was non-useful land. But today we prize the bluff lines and build huge homes on land that will surely one day crumble away. (There is a Gospel text about that, isn’t there?) The insight–I am always amused when I ride by these homes and think of Thoreau. He wrote about digging the cellar for his cabin that all our homes are just doorsteps perched on a hole in the ground, which is an allusion to the grave, of course. So all these people with their big homes on the loose soil and instable limestone are just building porches on a hole in the ground next to a cemetery, like a monument even larger than the elaborate and decaying ones in the graveyard.
Oops. I did a sermon.
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Save it, Clyde, maybe you can use it sometime. 🙂
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amen clyde. great pulling together of images and philosophy. i am with you on the nuns and the grunts of the world. ostentatious monuments to self have always bothered me but what are you gonna do? they lived like that most often too. you steer clear of them while they are on the earth and only have to detour around the loud brash pressence once they are in the ground.
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i laugh at the cluster bunch snaffus in china because the leaders in china are so bad at making soultions that are worthwhile in a spur of the moment fashion. they work well in a committee with a 50 year plane but the people of the streets know that they need to just sit and wait for someone beyound their control to decide their fate. they will sit without a book, without a radio without a conversation for hour upon hour. this is changing now where the entire population has phones and they play games on the phones and develop adhd tendencies that america has exported to the rest of the world.
i do books on tape, xm radio, newspapres, and most often i get the heck off the road and find plan b. i would rather drive for an hour in hopes of going forward than to sit and wait for the clearing of the promlem.
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Tim:
Were you serious about wanting the vodka soaked raspberries? The first batch is nearly ready. If you want them follow the website to my email and give me a way to reach you! J
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timjones2020@gmail.com
we’re all friends here
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my mouth is watering profusely
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