Rocking My Commute

I have a 23-mile commute (46mi round-trip) everyday, primarily along the Washington DC Beltway (I-495). If you picture the Beltway as a clock, I travel from the six-o'clock (Exit 1) to 9-o'clock (Exit 10) points and back. After I dropped off Dash at daycare today, I checked the Google Maps App on my iPhone (LOVE this app! It's the reason Monkeyrotica gifted me the iPhone in the first place) and saw the Interstate was colored red (very slow traffic) right around my exit. As I approached my exit, I could see that traffic was NOT moving at all, and the ramp to the non-local exits was full of cars. I took the local route.

Here's a screengrab of what 495 looked like this morning, with my route in pink. See the red-and-black segments across the bridge in Maryland? That means traffic is stopped, not moving, you're SOL. I never got on 495, as my ramp continues as a ramp for the next exit, Telegraph Road—I took it and followed Eisenhower Avenue, which is a frontage to the Beltway for about four miles.

The next exit to merge with the Beltway is Van Dorn, and Eisenhower Ave conveniently ends right there. I ramped onto 495 at a point where there's usually heavy volumes of merging cars and there was NOTHING—only about three or four cars, including me. The rest of my commute, which typically takes 30-45 minutes? I sped through in 15. All the cars that were normally clogging the roads were stuck in Maryland or Occoquan, VA.

Woot! It's rarely this easy to navigate a bad snag. Anyway, now I'm at work. Have a great Wednesday, everyone!