It’s been a while since I’ve had a travel rant, but since I’ve been wandering around the country recently, I had to include some in this week’s random ;o)
1. Early last week disaster struck at my office. From afar, I read about the fact that, horror of horrors, the building next door to ours has finally been let out and we can no longer use their car parking spaces. E-mails were positively flying to the ‘All Glasgow’ distribution list discussing the crisis that we now faced.
For over a week we’ve been getting e-mails from the poor receptionists asking the owner of car ‘X’ to move it. At 8:20 yesterday morning the usually fairly empty-at-that-time carpark was about 3/4 full, and by 9am one car wasn’t so much parked as abandoned half on a kerb on a corner.
Oh, did I mention that my office is right across the road from a shopping centre with over 6,500 free spaces, and there’s, ooh, 250 odd of us?
2. Do you slow down to look at traffic jams? No, seriously, lanes that are going off a motorway are jammed, do you slow down everything else to a crawl so you can gawp at those fools heading into the jam? If this isn’t you, then I suggest you avoid the M8 while the Clyde Tunnel is having roadworks, because we all did 10mph past the junction in sympathy, despite the fact that we were in a 70 zone. Seriously people, don’t you have homes to go to?!
3. Oh well, on the bright side, an M8 jam is a rather smaller headache than the UK and US forces have trying to get everything home from Afghanistan this year. Between them they have 25,500 containers of equipment, 27,500 vehicles/pieces of major equipment, and 43,500 troops to get home, plus a bunch of other ‘stuff’. They will be leaving quite a few things behind though that are either too big, or too old to get home, so fire sale on old tanks then?
4. From one extreme to the other, have you ever had a bike stolen? Ever got it back a short time later? Well if the second part didn’t happen for you, consider making your own bike so that it’s so identifiable, you can easily track it down, like this bamboo bike that went walkies for a while in London, but was reunited with its owner after he saw it in a local market:
5. If the weather in the UK continues with its persistent rain, building that oft joked about ark might be the way to go instead of a bike, in fact Somerset would quite like the army to drop by there and help drain the 65 million cubic metres of water off the Levels so they don’t have to row out of there. Maybe they could do that on the way back from Afghanistan…
Linking up with my fellow Randomeers:
I feel your M8 woes – if someone so much as breaks down on the A1 around Newcastle it is apparently compulsory to slow right down and have a good look – be you on the same carriageway (and the car well off to the side) or on the opposite carriageway! 🙂
Ugh don't remind me of my Thursday commute home. Everything in Seattle is on bridges going East/West with only two routes going North, so yeah, traffic is not usually very smooth going. I don't know if you experience this phenomenon, but as the week goes on, people seem to leave the office earlier and earlier making my usually not too bad 20 minute commute at the beginning of the week a full 40 minutes longer by the end. I don't understand traffic either and I even studied it in grad school! 😉
I love your traffic reports, far more entertaining than the news!
Great idea to individualise your bike, perhaps the go is to make it so crazy no one would want to steal it in the first place. I'm glad I don't drive to work anymore, thought my train did have delay recently making it a 3 hour trip home.
Randomness to beat all randomness this week. I don't miss my old M8 days – Linlithgow to Hamilton was painful, Linlithgow to Clydebank was horrific! Juliex
Ah, traffic…and parking…
When our son was still at home, someone stole his fabulous mountain bike out of our garage, and left a really crappy rusty 10-speed in its place…
I do not understand why people stop and watch traffic jams. We call it rubbernecking in the states, what do you call it in the UK?
I love the parking story, will everyone park at the mall now? The floods are pretty terrible too, snow seems so much easier.
It look me an hour to get home 7 miles yesterday, so glad I usually leave before the rush hour!!!!
Nooooo please leeanne don't mention the snow. Hate snow, my car doesn't work in the snow (wrong wheel drive or something)
We have time limits on parking in shopping mall car parks in Aust. The traffic sounds awful. Sorry you are having a wet spell. We are in another 40 deg and higher heat wave at the moment and in Queensland they had a cyclone hit early this morning. My son is up where it hit. Thank God every one is ok.
Hugs Kay
oh my gosh. You should be a news reporter! I like your random reporting for sure!
Lucky your office isn't here and close to a shopping centre. Almost all large shopping malls/centres charge for parking, it's only free for the first two hours. So if you work in or near the shopping centre you can't park there unless you want to fork out $20+ a day.
Reading your traffic rants makes me glad to live in a place where traffic jams rarely occur! Free parking at my work (and it only takes me 6 minutes to get home and thats if I get all five sets of lights on red…)
Ah traffic – I sympathise! I have had a belly full of it this week!!
Sounds like you could do with a tank from that fire sale it might be a bit slower but you could just drive over anything that gets in your way 🙂