I drove back from my parent's this evening. What typically takes me 6 hours, if I hit a bit of traffic and don't speed on the gravel roads (but what else are gravel roads for?) took me nine hours to complete. This was due to CalTrans deciding it needed to fix every section of every freeway, all at once. Tonight, as a matter of fact. There were seven different instances of lanes removed from traffic, in four cases the freeways were reduced to a single lane of traffic. But you know, those I could handle. Those four, plus the bonus two, whatever. Potholes need filling, trees need trimming, bridges need to be blinged, I get that. And all together, they added only about half-an-hour to forty-five minutes to the trip. No, the big money tonight was the entire Southbound Interstate 5 freeway, the major route from Central California into Los Angeles, was closed just north of Magic Mountain, at a spot where you couldn't divert to one of the two other southbound routes (which would have added a few hours to the trip all on their own, so its a bit of a wash) if you wanted to. THAT little diversion added a solid pair of hours to my trip, mostly in the five mile stretch between off-ramps where four lanes of traffic funneled into a one-lane exit. With a traffic light at the end. That was EVER so cute.

I still have booze left, so the head of CalTrans need not watch for snipers, but I've decided that next time I'm timing my trip for smack in the middle of rush hour. I think it may be faster, all told.

Oh, how could I forget. That last half hour? That was due in part to extra stops for coffee, but mostly due to this one town off the 99 closing its sole Southbound on-ramp to traffic. Yes, its only one. I've just checked mapquest. It also had only one Northbound on-ramp, but it was located about three miles up an unlit frontage road from where the South freeway lets you out.

Gah. I need another shot now.