I never want this stupid bloog to become a whiny bitchfest about my dumb, dumb day job. But it's hard to convey the misery of it without doing so. So here's whiny and bitchy.
Today, in addition to the three hours of regular old driving I do in the city, I spent six consecutive hours in non-stop bumper-to-bumper urban and suburban traffic.
I spent 65 minutes on the inbound Eisenhower, accelerating and braking in 2 second increments.
Another 75 minutes were spent braking and accelerating on the outbound Kennedy, making sure no one cut me off, because I will go crazy if someone does.
45 of today's minutes were also used to accelerate and brake often and always on the southbound 294.
It's like trying to listen to the same song for six hours, but the song keeps falling out of rhythm, and skipping, and stopping, and restarting. And you have to keep this song constantly going with your right foot. But you don't even like this song. Because it's a very shitty song.
Between all that, there was traffic on the main streets.
There was traffic on the side streets.
There were lane closures.
There were passenger trains.
There were freight trains.
Everything I wanted to do, I couldn't.
Lately I've been using the brake more than the accelerator.
My right knee feels burnt by the end of the day.
The rest of my body is worn out and out of shape.
All I did was sit on my ass the entire day.
And I'm completely exhausted.
I wish I had a different perspective on the city.
Being on the roads all day paints an ugly, ugly image of Chicago.
The roads are not its heart.
The roads are its asshole.
The roads are where people behave with unending anger, selfishness, and inconsideration.
The roads are where people scream "Fuck you" at each other over simple negotiations.
Where people oblivious to the rest of the world operate machines that can kill.
Where people make lifelong enemies in a matter of seconds.
You don't see that so much in the supermarket aisles.
The roads bring out the worst in me.
When I am wronged on the roads, there's no escape.
There's no break room.
There's no coworkers to commiserate with.
You must keep driving.
And you either spit or swallow the hate.
If anger accumulated on my face like dirt, I'd come home every day looking like Al Jolson.
This job does have its freedoms.
But the roads are not free.
You are stuck.
That is perhaps what I miss the most about bike messengering.
You are never stuck.
In the short term that is.
After fucking work, I found a place to eat by Midway.
It was called Angelo's Beef Hut.
The hut looked like a hat.
I ordered a gyros plate.
The cook piled a giant mound of gyros meat on a pita.
It looked like a hut.
That looked like a hat.
I met Greg at his studio on the south side to do rough mixes of the remaining Nurse Novels songs. After that his wife Esther met us at a bar formerly called Mi Segundo Divorcio, which translates to My Second Divorce. Everyone was too friendly to us, and treated us very differently because of our race. We just wanted to drink a beer, and they thought we were yuppies or something, and interrupted our conversation several times to apologize about their modest bar and to offer tequila.
Beer's fine.
Bar's fine.
What was I saying...
Nice night but what a shitty, shitty day.
Verdict: Loss
I don't mind these road trip runs too much, even though I don't get home until 7.
