09.29.06
How you can make Atlanta traffic suck even more than normal.
Picture it: 5:30pm on a Friday afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia.
You get off work about an hour later than you usually do because someone who is more senior than you at work decides it’d be fun to schedule a meeting from 3:30pm to 5:30pm on a Friday. (Let us also mention that, unlike you, this more senior person lives about ten minutes from the office. You, on the other hand, live about an hour and a half from the office.)
So, you race out of the parking deck, hoping that Friday rush hour traffic hasn’t reached its sucky apex. You seem to have done something right that day, because you hit most of the traffic lights at an excellent time, and you somehow manage to avoid getting behind someone with blue hair driving a mid-80’s Cadillac, whose steering wheel they can barely see over.
You make excellent time, until you notice traffic stopped up ahead of you, with a police car straddling an intersection ahead. “Oh dear,” you think. “There must have been an accident.” You resign yourself to sitting there for a while, because, of course, you are stuck in a position that prevents you from turning around at all and finding an alternate route.
All of a sudden, you see a car round the corner that is heavily decorated in crepe paper and balloons. Leaning out of the sunroof is about five high school cheerleaders. You realize that it will be followed by twenty more cars decorated in the exact same manner.
It’s a PARADE.
Yep, folks. I found the one thing that will make a Friday rush hour in Atlanta even worse than normal this afternoon. Grrr!
