So, I accidentally bought Yankee tickets for the game today when I was supposed to buy them for the game next Saturday. Then, I got caught in the mother of all traffic jams and wound up arriving at Yankee stadium in the top of the eighth inning. What this meant, because the Yankees were winning and there was no bottom of the ninth, is that I saw an inning and a half of baseball. It was my first time inside the new Stadium. I was so angry when they decided to tear down the old ballpark that I simply had no desire to give them my money to go to the new one. The tickets are absurdly expensive and they charge $35 for parking.
The Stadium is gorgeous, though, and it is better integrated now with the surrounding neighborhood. Later in life, my son will be able to truthfully say that he saw Derek Jeter play, even if he never came to bat and my son spent the whole time worried about a cute little blond girl who wouldn’t stop staring at him. He’ll also be able to truthfully say that he played wiffleball in the middle of the Jersey Turnpike. Others threw footballs or frisbees, and one duo broke out their lacrosse sticks. We honestly could have barbecued if we had wanted to. At one point, I took a lawn chair out of my trunk and set it up, but I thought better of it when a nice lady invited us to join the wiffleball game. We were a very good-natured group of inconvenienced drivers. I think we were parked for about two hours and twenty minutes, and the traffic jam before and after we came to a complete standstill was probably a cumulative hour and a half.
Overall, it was a colossal waste of time, but at least we didn’t sit around and do nothing.
Brief video of my nightmare.
That sounds horrible. At least it was warm enough to get out and do something other than just sitting in the vehicle waiting.
You should have seen the traffic here in Atlanta back in January (1 inch of snow; businesses/schools that all let out right as the snow started to fall…idiots).
Luckily for me I wasn’t on any interstate highways, lived most of my life in the north where snow fell every year and driving on it is required, and also have a 4 wheel drive vehicle.
Considering that your whole region is a megalopolis, there should be lots of trains and other public transportation for people to use that is cheap and convenient. Unfortunately that would be a slippery slope to Socialism, so we can’t have that.
I did basically see your traffic in Atlanta, or at least your weather. I was driving to Florida at the time and was in South Carolina on the day that that storm hit.
Also, I never drive to Yankees games, but we didn’t get our crap together fast enough this morning to make that last train we would have needed to catch to get there on time.
The traffic was terrible because everywhere let out at noon, and then the snow fell. Regular roads were bad in places, but the highway was a total stand-still overnight. Welcome to the third world.
I wish there were true passenger rail across this whole country. Talk about a boost in the economy.
Kid play soccer?
FC New York will play in Yankee Stadium. I’m taking the kids to see David Villa in 2015.
First thought was that Christie was out moving the traffic cones again.
On the plus side, you now have a priceless story to tell for the next few decades.
Another plus is that it wasn’t snowing. Spent six hours in a traffic jam in PA on such a day.
That was my thought.
Hopefully I’ll be going to Yankee Stadium in 10 days, but not for baseball. Haha! And I’ll be taking Amtrak.
Yes, one of THOSE days that should have gone better, but I’m glad it didn’t get worse.
I travel often as part of my business and time is literally money. My days spent between trips are packed with important activities, and wasting time is losing money. So I abhor days like yours, where one thing leads to the next until an entire day has been blown.
I had that day last week, when I was out shopping and running errands for my next trip. In mid-morning, I stopped at a full service car wash and when the guys were finishing up, one of them said,
“It looks like you have a flat”. Oh, it was flat, alright, resting on the rim. I had to call and wait twenty minutes for AAA, then ride on the spare to the tire place, hand it over to them, and tried to salvage the wasted time by doing shopping for odds and ends at Big Lots.
When I felt that Store Security might start following me around, I went to the drug store and meandered around a while longer. Finally I went back to the tire place because the only place left to shop was a bakery, and god only knows the damage I might have done there!
Four hours later, the tire was patched. The huge time suck was a combination of many other cars ahead of mine and something about the air stem needing to be replaced. All i know is, I had one day to get a ton of things done, and instead all I got was some potato chips, cough drops, and some notebook paper.
“…my son spent the whole time worried about a cute little blond girl who wouldn’t stop staring at him.”
Your son got apparently older when I wasn’t paying attention. Shocking! For me, he is stuck in time at around 4 years old.
Well, he’s not stuck in time, but he is still four.