Surviving The Long Commute Home

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Leave In Silence]

My commute home usually takes between 30-45 minutes depending on traffic. Tonight though it took 2 hours. The freeway was closed and they were forcing everyone to exit onto what the Americans refer to as "surface streets" i.e those non-freeway streets that connect the Phoenix metro area. As you can imagine, hilarity ensued.

What always surprises me in these situations is how quickly people lose their temper. Perhaps I've been commuting here in the Phoenix metro area for so long that I'm just immune to it now. I turn up the volume to a level that would kill most large horses and just rock out playing the ol' steering wheel drums. What? You've never played the drums on your steering wheel? Oh you haven't lived.

It's times like these that I wish I had a video camera in my car. An elderly looking lady with tattoos driving an old Beetle forced her way in behind my car. She was livid. Unlike me, she was hitting her steering wheel out of anger. She was ranting and raving and kept steering slightly to the left and then to the right peering around my car. Each time she did this she got angrier and angrier. Of course she had to call someone and proceeded to give them a piece of her mind too. I was cracking up.

Then I had the youngish couple who were obviously going to be late for something and were fighting about it. The girl was driving and through my amazing lip reading and body language identification skills, ahem, could see he was pissed off and she was shouting back "well what the fu** do you want me to do about it?". Comedy gold.

Next was someone like me who was oblivious to the world around them and was dancing and singing their head off. This bloke made me grin as it was a refreshing change from the anger. Getting angry is not going to make the traffic move any faster. There's nothing you can do about it. Just relax and listen to some music.

Number of accidents witnessed due to people not paying attention and driving too close: 3. Drivers in Phoenix, quite frankly, are completely crap.