Sheesh

Today my roommate Erin and I decided to go to this hockey shop in Delta. She needed to go there to get some special repair work done on her stick, and I wanted to look at skates. We left just before 4 pm, and considering rush hour it should've taken us a maximum of an hour to get to our destination. It had been snowing off and on today, but it wasn't anything to get too worried about... so we thought. We drove for about 20 minutes and were on highway 91 when we hit a stop in traffic. And there we sat for 4.5 hours. Not kidding. I'll say it again. 4.5 hours. It was ridiculus. And we still don't know what really caused the problem. We heard something about vehicles stalling to get over the bridge... or up the hill... or something like that. Could've been semi-trucks, but maybe not. We have no idea. All I know is that we were in stand still traffic.... moving only a car length every 5 minutes... for 4.5 hours. There were concrete dividers on either side of the traffic lanes so we couldn't pull a u-turn and there were no exits anywhere to try and take a different route. It was ridiculus.

At some point... my bladder started to tell me that it would need to be emptied soon. I held it for a LONG time... before I couldn't handle it anymore. There were some bushes down on the other side of the highway (across the lanes of oncoming traffic) so I got out, hopped the concrete barricade, waited for a hole in traffic, ran across to the bushes, relieved myself in about 6 inches of snow, and came back. And my little adventure is all on video too, except for the x-rated part of course. Erin recorded it from the car.

So what do you do to entertain yourselves for 4.5 hours? Well, we looked through every cubby hole and compartment in her car, read every piece of paper lying around, played with our cell phones, took a picture of the same item using every single setting on Erin's camera, made videos of ourselves, listened to the radio, speculated about how long we'd be there, etc. I even used my Leatherman multi-tool to make artwork out of some papers, and read 2 chapters of a random book in Erin's car. It was great. I did get out at one point and jog a ways up the road to see what was going on. I didn't see much but sure had a lot of people rolling down their windows on my way back, asking me what I saw and what I knew. I felt like the scout sent to scope out the battle ahead!

We finally arrived at the hockey shop at about 8:40 pm, dropped off Erin's stick (thankfully they were open till 10 pm) and then went to find a McDonald's to satisfy our hunger... and my craving for chicken nuggets). It only took us half an hour to drive back home... passing a still enormous traffic jam on the other side of the highway.