So, How's That 22 Billion Treatin' Ya?

Yesterday my deep-rooted hatred against driving in Boston was confirmed. As I mentioned, I took the kids to see "Futures at Fenway", watching the Lowell (MA) Spinners play the Jamestown (FLA) Jammers. In the fifth inning, it started raining, ultimately resulting in the game getting canceled (as well as the second game between the Carolina League's Potomac Nationals and Salem Red Sox). We spent about an hour in the concourse area underneath the stands waiting to see if the rain would abate and allow the games to continue, leaving once water started coming up through the floor drains (!!!).

We left the parking garage at about 4:00 PM. We got home - a distance of about 37 miles - at 6:45PM.

Part of the problem was that Storrow Drive was partially flooded, resulting in a nasty backup of traffic. We got caught smack in the middle of it, coming up on a small car submerged up to the windows in flood waters. A MSP cruiser stopped for a few minutes to direct folks into a BU dormitory parking lot, but then inexplicably left the scene. We sat in traffic for a good hour, wound up driving past the same area again after an hour, and there was not a single Boston or MA police cruiser on the scene. The road was still impassable; cars were still being routed into the BU parking lot; and worst of all, the ramp to the affected area was not even blocked off.

After an hour the city of Boston had done exactly JACK SHIT to close off a completely impassable major thoroughfare in the city. Never mind we were treated to a litany of ads telling us that the "Big Dig" was going to reduce traffic in the city (HA!); the City of Boston can't even keep their major roadways clear of standing water. The amount we received yesterday was significant but by no means out of the ordinary for a summer shower; Storrow Drive was impassable in several spots and significantly impeded in several others. And don't get me started on our civil servants - the city's police couldn't even perform a simple function like closing off a flooded street.

Of course, the Herald and the Globe managed to get photographers to the scene (we saw one guy threading his way through traffic with three cameras strewn around his neck), yet the PD didn't see fit to send a single cruiser for the event. We wound up making one giant circle - I had kicked on the GPS to navigate us out once I realized the route was impassable, and it directed us in a big circle back to where we first got bound up. This took an hour - we traveled approximately a mile and a half - to make this loop - and when we went by the scene again there was not a single police officer present. Heck, they could have just had the DPW set up sawhorses closing the ramp - would have taken 10 minutes and at least not had people diving into Storrow West at the last second.

2.5 hours to travel less than 40 miles. That's why I hate driving in the city. The worst part was that as I sat in completely bumper-to-bumper traffic with absolulely nothing on either side of the road, both kids decided that they had to go to the bathroom. TheBoy was worse off, crossing his legs and grimacing as though he was being stabbed by knives; with BabyGirl G. chiming in after a harrowing 30 minutes during which we moved about a tenth of a mile. Eventually we got through the traffic and over into Cambridge, where we were able to pull into a Whole Foods store and get the poor kids some relief (leading to a somewhat humorous exchange between your humble host and a citified yuppie in a Beemer over the parking space that he attempted to steal from me. Yes, I used my "If you say one more word, they're going to be hosing parts of you out of a woodchipper tomorrow" look on him. Yuppies scare easy, you know that?).

All-in-all, it would be the understatement of the year to sayt it was hardly the family bonding experience I had hoped it would be...

That is all.