Today was veterans day, but it slipped my mind until I tried to get across the great isle of Manhattan. You just couldn’t get past 5th avenue. I tried almost every street from 54 to 29. They were all closed. The decision to take the tunnel into New Jersey made sense, considering my destination. It was however, made without realizing that there was a giant parade right down the middle of Manhattan. After over an hour of up and down, not ever getting past Madison Ave. I asked a friendly police officer who was holding about 300 cars at bay. “What’s going on” I yelled. She looked at me like I was from outer space and screamed “The Veterans Day Parade”, she yelled back without finishing the sentence, which was clearly, “you idiot”!
There was only one option, take the FDR uptown and over the bridge. But by then I was all the way to 29th street and I couldn’t get on until I was in the 40’s. You know the feeling you have when you are satisfied that you have finally made the sensible decision, and so you proceed to follow through and when it’s too late to turn back, the traffic is at a dead stop. Of course it was, at least 8 million New Yorkers decided to do the same thing.
Once I hit the 96 street exit, the traffic did that thing that always amazes me – it disappeared. It is at a dead stop on 116 and then at 117 it was all gone. This is forever puzzling. Martians, it must be Martians. The GW Bridge was traffic free. “Thank God”. By then it was 12:30 and I had been in the car for an hour and a half. My doctors appointment was at 1:30.
The drama was unending. Having grown up about 10 feet from the eye doctors appointment. The directions were clear, you take route 80 to 280 and take New road. Not so fast! It was like I was 10 years old again and whenever we misbehaved we made a deal to run down Kelly Lane and meet on Washington street. Panicked by whatever terrible thing we had done, I could never find Kelly Lane. It was the same today. I just couldn’t find route 280, which by the way, I have been on no less than 300 times. It was 12:15 the first time I pulled over and asked a gas station attendant, (who was one of those people taken by the Martians when the traffic clears up.) It was 1:00when I pulled into the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant. Finally someone knew where I was and where I was trying to go. It was 1:20 when the I pulled into the doctors parking lot. I had been driving for almost 3 hours.
OK, even I’m boed with this story so I won’t tell you about the return trip. Suffice it to say, it took lornger to get back to NYC. Here’s some advice; never go anywhere but shopping on Veterans day – and only if you can walk to the stores. We're just sayin'.... Iris
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