Part of my problem with the Hoboken/Long Island commute has always been that I don't really know what my options are. I've always been so pressed for time I never have a chance to research alternate routes that might make my trip less miserable. But after almost a year of suffering and experimentation, I seem to have settled into an optimal route. When leaving Hoboken, I head through the Lincoln Tunnel, cross Manhattan on 40th street, head down 2nd avenue to the Queens/Midtown Tunnel, cruise along the LIE for a little bit, jog to the Northern Parkway as soon as possible, take the Sagtikos south, head back on the LIE service road, then exit shortly afterward. Simple, right? The best route for the way back seems to be LIE to exit 42, cross to the Northern, take 295N to the Throgsneck bridge, exit the Cross Bronx before the inevitable backup by heading toward the Triboro bridge, switch to the Major Deegan heading north just before that bridge, sneak across the George Washington bridge from one of the alternate entrances, then take the NJ Turnpike south toward the Lincoln Tunnel, but exiting into Hoboken just before the tunnel traffic itself. You followed that, right? Believe me, every turn of that trip in each directly has been finely tuned to avoid the common hot spots I usually get screwed at, i.e. the LIE/Cross Island intersection, the Cross Bronx Expressway as a whole, and the north-bound George Washington. As a result of this optimization, my Friday night return commute is usually closer to 2 hours than 3, my trip in is usually under 1.5 hours, and I've calmed down on the road somewhat.
Somewhat.
I still get the occasional moment where I want to flog someone, but lately these haven't been traffic related but merely idiot related. To explain my frustration with one such experience, I first have to journey back a year and tell you an older story.
When I was first learning to drive around the area around New Jersey, I ended up getting lost a lot because I generally knew only one way to get between any two points. If I got diverted from that path, I was lost, period. One cold night in the winter of 1996, I was driving along the river to pick someone up. I had to make a left turn to climb a hill in order to reach them, which happens at a stoplight. As I was sitting waiting for the green arrow to make the left, I noticed a police car sitting on the side of the road I was about to turn on to. He had his lights flashing, and he was blocking part of the street. Now, this particular road started out very wide, easily wide enough to fit three cars, and it tapered to a normal two-lane configuration as it went up. So even though the police car had its nose sticking out, there was still over a full regular sized lane available for me to drive through. The light changed, I turned in front of his car and headed up the hill.
With siren wailing, he followed me. Apparently he wasn't happy with my choice of road. As I climbed the hill, looking for a good place to pull over, I discovered his issue. It seems a fireplug was loose, and water was streaming down the hill. Given the frozen conditions, that meant the road turned to ice about halfway up. I stopped dead in the middle of the road, because the construction crew trying to stop the flow of water was there, and waited for my confrontation with the police officer.
"What are you doing?" he asked incredulously. "Didn't you see I was blocking the road?" I started at him dumbfounded. What I wanted to scream at him was the following: "No you weren't. If you'd have been blocking the road, I'd wouldn't have been able to drive on it, because you'd have been BLOCKING THE ROAD!" Instead, I replied with my usual response when assailed with such a poor grasp of vehicular logic, "Huh?" The lectures continued as I handed over my vital paperwork and informed the officer I had thought he was just sitting on the side of the road, as there was plenty of room to pass by him. Meanwhile, several more cars joined our little backup in the middle of the icy hill, again because the officer was not BLOCKING THE ROAD. Ultimately, my driving record was found to be clean, I was let go, and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out another way to reach my destination.
Now, back to the present. I had borrowed a hand-truck from U-Haul to move some speakers with, and forgot to return it that day. It wasn't until a full week later I had time during the day to return it when they were open, which meant I was looking at $49 of charges instead of the $7 I had originally expected. Not a good thing. I drove to the local U-Haul, which has a miserable parking lot. I looked around for a bit and found a tiny spot my small car just fit it, pulled in, and started to unload.
A man approached me. "You can't park in that spot," he said in his most authoritative tone. "That's why I put a cone there." I followed his eyes to find the spot next to me had one of those half-height orange cones sitting in back of it. Just one cone, mind you. To this fellow, I wanted to say "If you'd have been blocking that spot with the cone, I wouldn't have been able to park in it without RUNNING OVER YOUR FUCKING CONE!" Instead, I replied with my usual response when assailed with such a poor grasp of vehicular logic, "Huh?" He pointed toward a rear mini-lot apparently intended for cars. Rather than debate this slow-witted man, I decided it was easier to move my car to the rear and run him over with the hand-truck on my way back. Just kidding. I didn't move my car first.
You'd think that the logic of blocking a roadway from use would be self-evident, but apparently there's a sore need for a course. I'd be glad to teach it, but only if I'm given a baseball bat for particularly slow students.
After leaving the U-Haul, I headed through the Holland Tunnel instead of the Lincoln because it was more convenient. It was my first unsupervised trip in this direction through the Holland; all my previous trips into Manhattan via this route had been with someone else in the car. After getting through the tunnel, I got caught in the middle of the road because of a traffic backup. The light changed, I was stuck in an odd position, and cars were heading toward me. Not a happy place. I maneuvered around the cars in my way and tried to escape. Apparently one of the other blocked cars decided this was a good move as well, as he also started moving. Right in front of me. I wasn't looking. Boom, into his rear bumper at around 10MPH. Oops. We pulled over, and I found a dent in his bumper approximately the same size as my license plate. The license is not my battering ram of choice in such a situation, but it was sufficient to beat his Honda bumper up. We talked for a bit, I estimated the damage by eye (my father does sell auto insurance, so I'm familiar with such things), he agreed to my estimate, I paid him in cash. A quite unhappy day for my wallet. I thought I started the day with enough money for the week, yet I had to hit the bank just to pay for lunch.