I've new respect...

[Georgie]

...for people who commute to NYC every day. On Thursday, my sister and I had reason to take a train to Penn station and two subways to Jamaica, Queens to pick up her husband's car (which had broken down on his way home from CT and towed to a place for repair. It's a long story...)Then it was a six block walk in the pouring rain to the car...a harrowing drive home in steady rain at rush hour at a speed of 15 mph on roads I've only heard of on the morning traffic reports...the Van Wyck..over the Verranzano and Goethals Bridges... Holy Mackerel...what an experience for us sheltered suburbanites! I can't imagine doing that every day of my life!

[Kcwhippet]

Why didn't he get his own car?

[Georgie]

Like I said it was a long story. He met us at Penn Station and because we were a little worried about the car, we decided that he should take the train back to CT where he's been working and sister and I would take the car home. At least there were two of us and headed for home in case it should croak on the way. At least that part worked out OK.

[Innkeeper]

At one point in an otherwise dull life, I taught AFROTC at the former University Heights campus of New York University. We lived at Ft Totten in Bayside Queens. It was practically under and inside the approaches to the Throgs Neck Bridge. Therefore I had to get on the Bell Parkway to the Whitestone Bridge. Up to the Bruckner Traffic Circle (which was under contruction the whole three years, and still is), across the Cross Bronx Experssway, and then up the Major Degan Expresway a mile or two the campus. It was eleven miles. In the morning it took an average of 55 minutes, and in the evening it took and average of 1 hr, 10 minutes. On Friday of a three day weekend it took 2 hrs and 15 minutes. That was thirty five years ago, and things are much worse now.

[wondersofwine]

And I get upset in a 20-minute traffic jam!

[Kcwhippet]

I have a 12 mile commute that takes 20 minutes - 30 on a really bad day, like during a snow storm.

[Georgie]

No wonder you started drinking, IK!

[Thomas]

IK, that's no bridge, it's a contractor's dream--an endless construction project...paid for by the gullible and long- suffering locals.

In the 1980s it took me an hour and twenty minutes to drive nine miles from Brooklyn into Manhattan--on a good morning.

I remember when I came to the Finger Lakes I was looking for gainful employment while I prepared to get my winery going. Some guy in Rochester asked me in an interview if I could handle driving from my Keuka Lake home 70 miles to Rochester for an hour and twenty minutes each way, daily.

I replied, "Sure can. I used to do it daily in NYCity, but here I'd be getting somewhere."

[winedope1]

SIGH... I've missed you all! Major shakeup- Started a new job recently and have neatly neatly tripled my commute- 45 minutes each way if it's off-peak. Oh well, fortunately the job is worth it! WD

[hotwine]

Welcome back, WD! It's just the usual miscreants hangin' around here, so you've not missed much.

[Bucko]

Hey! I'm not a miscreant, I'm an a'hole. Now git that straight! [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/eek.gif[/img] [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/eek.gif[/img] [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/eek.gif[/img]

[Thomas]

for the first time, I fully agree with Bucko... [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/eek.gif[/img]

[stevebody]

As Bucko will undoubtedly attest, traffic up here in Sea-patch and Ta-Coma is bewilderingly awful. At very least, in NYC environs, they've built roads that were designed to carry vast numbers of vehicles. Here, we have virtual cart-paths that look like parking lots. I just drove back from Woodinville through Redmond at 4:30 on a Friday and was desperately trying to remember the downside of road rage. One of the most maddening things is I-5 through Tacoma, around the mall and the T-Dome, which routinely becomes a used car lot for long periods of the day. For those of you not blessed with first-hand knowledge of Tacoma, it isn't exactly Metropolis. Where all the cars come from is one of those knotty mysteries of NW life that were only hinted at in "Twin Peaks". Give me NYC and some good, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon invective shouted out car windows anyday...

[Thomas]

Stevebody,

the beauty of NYCity traffic is that it goes so slow a pedestrian has time to pound or jump on the hood of a car that won't let him cross the street...happens every day.