If you’ve lived in Atlanta long enough, you’ve sat on its maze of underdeveloped highways with thousands of your closest friends. Traffic here is a nightmare and it is only getting worse because people keep coming.

Recently, we had a situation that brought the city to its knees: part of the interstate burned down. How does a road burn? Concrete, steel, asphalt… gone. Luckily, no-one was hurt.

Without video or evidence of any kind, authorities somehow managed to arrest the culprit almost immediately. I am not typically a conspiracy theorist, but it all seems to neat and easy if you ask me. A homeless man decides to burn all his worldly goods while strolling next to an underpass storage facility containing heaps of what turned out to be highly flammable PVC pipe (prompting the DOT to clean out every other underpass in the city.)

Hmmmmmmm. I’m not buying it.

Regardless of my doubts, I-85 was shut down. I don’t have to negotiate that interstate to get to work. However, everything headed in from the north was affected as people rerouted around it. The mayor (as if an agent of Quicktrip) told the citizens to make sure their gas tanks were full before heading to work and there was fear and panic in the Peach state as if there were an impending snowstorm.

You know what happened?

So worried were the people that they changed their schedules. They telecommuted. They took mass transit. They worked flex hours. It was unbelievable. What was predicted as a cataclysmic assault of cars became day after day of Friday-like traffic for me. It was heaven!

And I got spoiled.

Meanwhile, the city offered its contractors a seven-figure bonus to finish early and they did. I assumed that would mean even less traffic for me. I was wrong. Everyone came back en masse and there I sat… stop and go on 400… staring at rows of red lights braking the hallelujah chorus in morse code.

A Counterintuitive Confluence of Cars!

I flicked on Google Maps but it laughed at me and flicked itself off.

So I tried Waze. My boss uses it all the time, but I never have. I like how it speaks soothingly to you as it tells you how screwed you are. I also found out that you can become a Waze Warrior, Royalty, or even a Waze Ninja by reporting accidents, stalls, police, and other traffic issues.  As you make these reports, you gain credibility until you are given rank. I have always wanted to be a ninja! So now I have a goal.

But I know myself and I know I won’t stick to it; so I found another option. Not only can you report helpful stuff, you can report Roadkill. I’ve reported roadkill for days now. It might be a heap of trash, but it looked like a possum as I sped past – which is laughable in this traffic.

 

Now all I want is to be the Waze Roadkill Rebel!

 and to get to work. I’d really like to get to work.

 

If only another section of road would collapse…