I'm Retired! Now what?

When driving to anything in Dallas, Texas during the late afternoon or early evening bad traffic is not only feared, it’s expected!  So when I’m making the trek down to a concert or the big game, I always give myself plenty of time to fight through the miserable traffic of the fourth largest metroplex in the United States.  However, what I don’t expect is getting stuck in a traffic nightmare on the way back home.  Driving through Dallas on my way to Grand Prairie for a concert last Saturday evening was a breeze.  Weekend traffic isn’t anything compared to the Monday through Friday bumper to bumper rush hour grind!  However, being the traffic pessimist that I am, I still gave myself plenty of time to get to the Texas Trust CU Theater to see the amazing talents of violinist Lindsey Stirling.   In fact, traffic was so smooth that I got there an hour early.  The little, dancing violin player put on quite the performance, and she was playing those strings while jumping around the stage until nearly 11:00 pm.  With another grueling thirty minutes or so added on just to get out of the parking lot I thought, “Saturday late night traffic?  This will be a breeze!”  I figured I’d be home in no time…or so I thought.

As I hit eastbound Hwy 30 toward Dallas my GPS was telling me to go one way, but I wanted to go another.  Personally, I think Dallas has a beautiful downtown skyline, and whenever I get a chance to see it at night, I’m going to take it!  GPS directions be darned!  Besides, I knew where I was going, right?  As I cruised eastbound, the dazzling view of all those Dallas skyscrapers, lit up in all their glory, started to fill my windshield.  I was so enchanted by the glittering sight that I completely ignored the voice of my GPS mistress who was basically screaming at me to take the approaching exit to the right!  “Oh nonsense,” I thought.  She was wanting to take me on some weird, unscenic pathway, and to ensure a nice view of downtown Dallas while leading me on toward my precious, homeward bound Hwy 75 north I was confident that I needed to exit to the left!  Or so I thought.   As I drove past the exit that my GPS vixen was pleading me to take, my mind quickly came to the realization of, “Wait a minute.  I think my desired exit was to the right after all.  Oh, silly me.”  I guess we all have those moments when we think we’re smarter than our GPS just to discover the awful truth…we’re not!

I don’t know why I thought my exit toward Hwy 75 was to the left.  However, when I’m driving up Interstate 35 toward downtown Oklahoma City and I want to merge on to Interstate 40 I indeed, always exit left.  Maybe that’s what was confusing me, even though these two cities are two hundred miles apart.  Okay, I really don’t know what the heck I was thinking, but now the thought that was screaming in my head was, “How in the heck am I going to get back to northbound 75?”  It’s times like this when I almost expect my GPS to yell out, “I told you where to exit, dumbass!”  However, I knew if I stayed on eastbound Highway 30 it would whip around downtown Dallas and bring me back to my beloved, northbound Highway 75…or so I thought.

There’s nothing worse than seeing a mile and half of RED highway on your GPS screen, and for some reason I got stuck in a traffic jam around downtown that was barely moving, and I do mean, BARELY MOVING!  This consisted of an hour or more of stopping, starting, and crawling while never going much over two miles an hour!  Now I’ve been in traffic jams where I actually killed the engine and got out of my car, but this wasn’t quite that.  However, I felt as if I was stopped a whole lot more than I was going, and such a stall gave me a great view of the free-flowing traffic on the freaking highway I would have been on if I had just taken the right freaking exit!   The traffic on that highway was moving like a dream.  The traffic I was stuck in was shut down like a dang nightmare.  Yup, it sucked being me!

There’s usually only two reasons traffic comes to a stop at midnight on a Saturday night.  Either there is mass construction going on up ahead or some poor soul (or several poor souls) played a little highway bumper cars and lost.  Okay, maybe it sucks being them more than me in such a case.  Then again, things got worse for me when my GPS suddenly said, “Route closed.”  And I’m thinking that it was basically giving up!  I guess my GPS vixen was fed up with me and was basically saying, “I told you where to go.  You’re on you own!  Sucks being you!”  While I started pleading with my GPS to get me out of this mess, I saw the rear door open on a car a few vehicles in front of me.   Suddenly some girl stuck her head out the open door and deposited everything she had either eaten or drunk for the evening upon Highway 30.  Apparently, the young lady had partied a little too much for the evening.  Yea, we’ve all been there.  Actually, I’ve never done that, but I guess it sucked being her for the moment.

I finally thought things were getting better as I approached a familiar exit only to find it blocked off by four Dallas Police cruisers.  Okay, it was back to “Sucks being me” again.  Indeed, the time was pushing past one in the morning, and I basically had no idea where I was.  Then like a voice from heaven, my GPS kicked back in as if it was telling me, “I’ll give you another shot.  Don’t screw this one up!”  With the charm of a pissed off elementary school teacher, the voice guided me around downtown again, and before I knew it, I had found my beloved northbound Hwy 75.  And as an added bonus, it was somewhat clear.  The Saturday night party crowd had either gone home or were pulled over somewhere puking their guts out.  Feeling the need to make up for lost time, I put my foot to the pedal of my trusty Chevy, and I was cruising up the Dallas freeway at around 80 miles an hour!  Even though I thought I was hitting the pavement at NASCAR speed, two pickups flew by me like I was standing still!  I figured they were either two of the local street racers or they were someone who really needed to go to the bathroom something fierce!  Yea, sucks being them.

I never saw the two speed demons again, but I did pass a couple of misfortunate souls who had the long arm of the law pulled in behind them with their party lights flashing.  Yea, it really sucked being them.  Speaking of police, once I got out of the metro one of the local law cruisers pulled in behind me.  Fortunately, I had tamed my speed down by then, and apparently, I was far too boring for the cops because the cruiser passed me and pulled in behind the guy in front of me.  After about a half a mile the local law hit their own party lights and the police cruiser lit up like a Christmas tree.  What was really weird was the fact that the guy in front of me wasn’t speeding or doing anything remotely questionable.  So this leads me to believe that the law was out looking for this guy, and regardless who he was or what he had done, the night was over for him.   Yea, really sucks being him.