The great gridlock escape
3rd August, 2006
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The black strip of bitumen to the left beckoned, empty and stretching away towards the city. Ahead lay two lanes of traffic, endless twin ribbons of car roofs and red tail lights that unravelled into infinity. I sat and played with the radio buttons, listening to, but not hearing, the blah-blah of the breakfast jocks. How awful, I thought, to have to pretend to be deliriously happy every morning. I bet when they finish work, they go home and kick the cat.
I looked at the woman in the car beside me. Now that's a big nose, I thought. It then occurred to me that I had of late noticed an increasing number of women in this city with big noses. Was there some virus at work that affected only women and had the effect of making their noses grow? It was an interesting theory and one that kept me amused for a full three minutes before I tired of it. And still the traffic did not move. The Brisbane City Council has this wonderful system on Coronation Drive which switches the direction of the traffic flow in some lanes at different times. It must have taken some genius, I thought, to work out a system that provides three lanes of traffic outbound in the morning, lanes that are invariably all but empty, and leaves two lanes inbound totally clogged with traffic and a largely vacant transit lane for buses and cars carrying three occupants or more. "Morons," I muttered as I realised that my musing on the big female nose virus had made my own nose itch. You cannot, of course, scratch an itchy nose while sitting in traffic. It might be just an innocent scratch, but those sitting in the car beside you will immediately brand you as a traffic nose-picker. So I sat while my nose twitched and still the traffic didn't move. A few minutes later I began to regret my choice of underwear. Every man has three types of underwear. There are the cheap and nasty pairs given by parsimonious relatives which cost fifty cents and are so small your eyes bulge when you put them on. There are the ones that are comfortable but so aged they tend to succumb to gravity's pull and then there are the "good undies", those that fit perfectly, look respectable and are reserved for significant social occasions. I'd gone for the first type on this particular morning and was now paying the price, but once you're in the car and trapped in traffic, there's not much you can do when your underwear decides to attack you. I wriggled in my seat but it was no use. I could only achieve a satisfactory outcome by getting out of the car and performing a complete groin rearrangement and I wasn't doing that. So I sat and suffered and looked at the sparsely trafficked outbound lanes and all but empty transit lane and wondered at council stupidity. Then I looked in the rear-view mirror and watched as the right hand of the driver behind me strayed towards his nose. I knew what he was thinking - "Will I get away with a quick scratch?" Then he saw me watching him. He lost his nerve and the hand retreated. I'd been sitting for at least fifteen minutes now and had progressed ten metres. As I sat, I watched the traffic moving in the transit lane - council buses, and a few cars with just one person aboard. On some mornings I'd watch as these lane cheats were corralled by the police who occasionally lay in wait. "Serves you right," I'd snort as they sat red-faced while the officer wrote them a ticket. I suddenly decided I'd had enough. Left indicator on, check the rear view mirror, a quick look over my left shoulder and floor to the accelerator! What a wonderful sensation of escape I felt as I roared down the transit lane. If I got booked it would be worth it. I waved merrily to those still sitting in their cars and they glared back. I didn't care. I was free! I'm not suggesting for a moment that anyone should imitate this act of gross civil disobedience but God, it felt good! |
