Folks in Aspen complain about traffic--I was in Chicago 2 weeks ago and it was a lovely reminder of what traffic really looks like. The wife was having neck surgery and I was at Northwestern hospital a lot. Each time I left it took me 15-20 minutes to go the first 500 yards. Yup, you read that right. I could have crawled drunk along the ground 3x faster than I was driving. They actually had to have an attendant at the parking garage exit deal with people whose paid parking tickets had timed out while trying to get out of the garage. Now that is traffic. And then driving around lincoln park continues to be like playing Frogger on Acid and speed. Pedestrians, cars, buses, trucks and those dam bicyclists (oh yea and skateboards, hoverboards and boost it boards) all trying to get ahead. Scary crazy shit.
However, it's light out, the distances you are trying to cover are not that far and in general no one is going that fast.
In Aspen it's dark, and people go fast to cover the distances they tend to be driving (long) and often are drunk (or at least legally over the limit). Humm that does make things a bit more interesting. And this past weekend I was staying in Avon for a hockey tournament that had me driving to Vail and Eagle. Between Avon, Vail and Eagle I must have driven through 9 traffic circles on each route for a grand total of 35-40 circles. I am not sure what these planners were thinking of, but for people new to the area (like just about everyone there on vacation which is just about everyone) traffic circles are challenging to say the least and not just for the driver. I found my google maps app blown away in Avon in a couple of the circles. Good fun.
And then there was some local road rage. I was stuck directly behind a guy driving down owl creek road at 25 MPH (5-15 miles an hour under the speed limit). For you Chicago based readers that is kinda like driving on Lake Shore Drive at 35 miles an hour. At 9 AM. There were bikes going downhill faster than us. At the merge with 82 I passed him (bad me for passing during a turn but seriously I was going to miss yoga, and I can't have that). At this point he sped way up, got right on my ass, pulled out his cell phone and took a video of my car while flipping me off (basically no hands on the steering wheel). He then got into the breakdown lane as we approached the traffic circle, swerved towards my car and then passed a bunch of cars illegally. Hum his Aspen high seemes to have worn off.
Next up weed---wife is gonna try some medical for pain management. And Jarvis was consuming some as well the day before the end.
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