Chapter
Thirtyfour:11 April 2005
traffic
These are all just traffic pictures. You can see how fast we are getting
to work on the morning of my thirtyfirst birthday. :P which sucked.
(the traffic, not my birthday)
I got a phone call at five thirty in the morning. It was the boys, and
they sang happy birthday to me. It was a very super sweet way to wake
up! Thank you Daniel and Brennen!
Fifteen minutes in, and we’re still on the Te Atatu Penninsula.
(home) Ordinarily at this point, we would have only been on the road
maybe at the most – five minutes. Now we realize we might be late
for work.
We can see a clear beautiful shot of Patrick’s destination. I
have to drop him off in the morning before I head on past the downtown
core. We are on the Northwestern motorway (#16) and the speed limit
is 100 km/hr. Rose and the boys know that sometimes traffic (especially
in the mornings) is at a standstill. They arrived first thing in the
morning and experienced the traffic heading downtown from the #20 motorway.
About forty five minutes into our drive, we’re on the off ramp
to the city. It’s backed up because four lanes on the Harbour
Bridge are closed. They are going to open them up and close them again
in May. FOUR LANES ON THE HARBOUR BRIDGE! And it’s backing up
in my section, tacking on an extra ten to fifteen minutes of just sitting
on the off ramp.
Doo doo doo doo doo yep, we’re still waiting behind a long line
of traffic. After we get past the lights, I get to sail clearly for
a minute in a lane that sometimes has an illegally parked car to hamper
my morning moment of momentum.
Ten hours later. It’s my birthday so the girls let me leave five
minutes early. I’m supposed to pick Patrick up and head out to
Fish on Pah Rd. (Just off of Manukau Rd) for a lovely birthday dinner.
It’s Broadway and I’m stuck and people keep trying to nip
around and get in front of me and now I’m feeling road ragey.
It took what is usually a fifteen minute drive, twenty with some traffic
– forty five minutes for me to pick up Patrick on Queen Street.
I work on Remuera Rd, by Broadway (pretty swank area) and I’m
almost sobbing in dispair claiming I am having the suckiest birthday
ever.
We didn’t go to fish. We sat in the backed up because there was
a two truck accident on the Northwestern Motorway at like three oclock
that afternoon traffic and I was in deep dispair thinking I just wanted
to go home. It’s eleven hours later plus and I’m pretty
upset that Patrick didn’t even make me a Happy Birthday card.
I took this picture. We weren’t going all that fast, believe me,
but at night time, the camera takes some pretty bizarre pictures.
They are all traffic pictures. There are no pictures of my happy birthday.
We did end up going for Thai food, excellent service and super yummy
prawns! I felt better. When we got home, Patrick ran me a hot Lush bubble
bath and lit the last of our partylite candles. While I was in the bath,
he baked me a cake. I went to bed, completely exhausted.
Check out what traffic is moving like on the other side of the meridian!
Lucky buggars. Don’t you wish you could go that way? Live life
on the other side, in the fast lane, moving somewhere instead of being
stuck with the other drones? I hate that we’ve moved to Te Atatu.
I loved downtown. I like our new house and our new things and all of
the space, but I wonder if it’s worth it. We live in like richmond
or coquitlam – it only takes a half hour at the most to get downtown
during the day or on weekends – but the hour at a 30 km/hr crawl
it takes to get to work and get back home bites big time. We were home
by nine pm, thirteen hours after we’d left in the morning. Patrick
woke me up and sang to me with his beautiful decorated baked cake with
a giant scented candle on top. “Do you want a piece now?”
“No thank you.”
“That’s okay. We can have some for breakfast in the morning.”
Ahahahahahahahahahhahahahahaha
Much love,
April