Traffic Jam

Yesterday we made plans to take my brother and his boys on the boat for tubing and dinner.  Spent the morning taking care of errands and the afternoon preparing for the evening's festivities.  You know what they say about the best laid plans.

First, our son gets a late invite to a party and HAS to go.  So after numerous calls coordinating and gaining help from friend's parents, I can salvage the evening.  My nephews are thrilled he bailed on them, but there will be other times.

Next, my husband is late coming home, which means a 2:00 leave turns to 3:00.  Still ok.  Just call brother, who is also running late.

It's now 3:15 and we are packed and ready to relax.  Jump in the car, hop on the 290 and stop.  The traffic to Grand Island is out of control.  Well there are other routes right?  So leave 290, take River Road.  Backed up worse.  Still persistent, we take Elliciot Creek to Niagara Falls Blvd expecting to catch the bridge from the other end of the island.  Not gonna happen as we are stopped on Elliciot Creek for what seems like an eternity.

Now my husband is livid and has had enough, I am car sick and feel a headache fast approaching.  Brother calls from his traffic jam basically saying NO WAY.  At 6 :10 we finally get out of traffic and find a restaurant with lots of cocktails.

So help me out, we have lived in Buffalo for the past 14 years and I have NEVER been in such a traffic situation.  The Grand Island bridge was down to one lane, the 33 was blocked, the Maple/NF Blvd area is under construction.  Has the city decided to do all road construction on the same weekend???

It's great that Art Park is having Friday night events and it is wonderful to feel like a real city that has weekend entertainment marked by lots of people in cars and its encouraging to see that our highways are being updated.  But personally, it really sucked.

With the rare nice weather - time off combo, a missed opportunity is discouraging.  At least I had some personal talk time with the husband.  Surely, he must have been thrilled to spend 3 hours with me rambling in a traffic jam.