Recently I was in the middle of a complicated set of installations in Hoboken for a while, which meant I got to spend more time in town. The bad news? I was run ragged with work to do. Late one night, I was up till 4am working on one painful piece of work that wasn't going well. I returned to my apartment exhausted, hoping for a couple of hours of sleep before I had to start again at 7:30. I circled the area several times; there were no parking spots. Unlike a normal time of night, there was little hope somebody would be leaving anytime soon, either. Defeated, I pulled my car in the driveway, blocking the garage and hoping that none of my neighbors would try to leave before I got back up again. I grabbed my nap, awoke at 7:15, and stumbled down the stairs.
You guessed it, no car there. What a way to start my day. I called the tow lot to verify they had it. "Gold Geo? No, haven't seen any of---oh, wait, here it comes!". Missed it by that much!
I eventually found the police station, paid my tribute---uh, fine, and started the 20 minute walk from there to the towing lot. Some evil person decided to place those two about as far as it was possible for two points in Hoboken to be. Sweaty, tired, I retrieved my car. I inspected it carefully before pulling away: one tire was starting to go flat. Apparently the bouncy ride on the tow truck had finally done in one the tire I had previously nailed on a pothole badly enough to dent the rim and knock the hubcap off. A quick trip to the gas station filled the tire again, and I was back in action, $75 poorer. But still with only three hours of sleep. Somehow I managed to make it through the day. The only good news is that none of my neighbors were at fault. My ticket said I was towed for blocking the sidewalk, not the driveway. Why the damn pedestrians can't just walk around me, I don't know. After all, those bastards walk on the road all the time, what's wrong with me putting my car where they travel? It seems logical to me. In any case, my late-night problems were far from over for the week.
I was driving home from work at 2AM. You'd think that I'd get a break from the traffic when on the road that late. You'd of course be wrong, because late nights mean the construction crews are out in full force.
All was fine until I hit the Cross-Bronx. I could see a backup in front of me as I was turning one corner. I thought briefly if I might exit, but then I realized something: it was very late at night, and I was in the middle of the Bronx. If I'd have exited the road at that point, I'd no longer have the safety of the highway in my favor. See, cars moving at 70MPH seem to dissuade people from wandering in the middle of the road trying to car-jack, which cuts down on the foot traffic in such an area. Had I left the main route, I'd no longer have such a safety measure available. Remember: taking an exit on the Cross-Bronx means that you'll be in the Bronx. This is not necessarily a good thing.
Now, as I was trying to figure out what to do, some cars ahead of me had already decided they were frustrated with the backup. How did I know this? Because they were driving in reverse down the highway toward me. This I just don't understand. If you're on a major road, there is never a good reason for you to be in reverse. Missed your exit? Too bad, turn around some other way. Seeing the white reverse lights come on in a car that's in the middle of a major highway is, to me, sufficient justification for killing that person on the spot as an attempt to cleanse the gene pool. If you're dumb enough to be driving down the highway backwards, we should just put you out of your misery now. This leads into my argument about why I should be allowed to have a bazooka mounted on the front of my car, but that's another story.
So, left with no options, I sat in the rear of the backup. And waited. And waited. I recalled a story my roommate told me. He said he riding in a boat along the Hudson as part of his ROTC training, and the instructor pointed toward a road. "That's Route 1," he informed the class. "If you started here and drove south for 14 hours, you'd go all the way to Florida". A few moments later, he informed them "That's the Cross Bronx Expressway". "If you started here and started driving south, 14 hours later you'd still be on the Cross Bronx Expressway". The guy wasn't really exaggerating.
As it crept toward 4am and I was still stuck, I started screaming. Some people pay big money to join back-to-nature outings where they head to the countryside and go through primal scream therapy. Me, I have my commute. The best thing about periodically starting to scream at the top of your lungs when caught in Bronx traffic at 4am is that it keeps the vandals away from your now stationary car.
Ultimately, it was revealed that they'd closed the whole upper level to the George Washington Bridge, and then a tractor-trailer jackknifed, blocking two of the remaining three lanes. All the traffic that would normally cross the six lanes of the full-capacity bridge went into a sole lane. I didn't finally get across until 4:40, which meant I was looking at getting home around 5AM. Barely able to stay awake, I crossed the New Jersey Turnpike and started looking forward to bed, thinking my trouble had to be over for the night.
I really should know better by now.
I'm only on the Turnpike for a short distance, and the place I come in at doesn't involve the regular ticket. If you exit the GW Bridge and take the Lincoln Tunnel exit, you get a 45-cent toll. Since there's no other way you could have gotten to that toll booth except that route, there are "Exact Change" dishes you can just dump your 45 cents into and be done, without handing money over to a person. I had a stack of quarters and some loose change, so I found 45 cents, pulled up to the dish, and dropped it in. Nothing happened. The red light didn't change, the lever blocking my way didn't open. Too tired to fight with an attendant about it, I just tried dropping another two quarters in. I learned long ago that "Exact Change" means "At least this much", it will take 50 cents without a problem--and, no, the person behind you doesn't get a 5 cent break after that. Despite this, the lever still didn't' rise. I was stuck with no forward motion, and really didn't want to cause a scene this late by bothering the sole attendant in the area with the problem. So I did what any logical person would do. I put the car into reverse and started backing down the highway...
P.S. On October 28, Hoboken mailed me a note saying I'd missed one of the fines I was supposed to pay in association with the towing. That'll be another $53, cha-ching!
P.P.S Still no bazooka, but apparently I could get a flame thrower mounted on my vehicle now.