Dave1982
05-17-2007, 01:17 AM
Well, no. This is far from the worst, but the series of events that happened on my day trip to Battleship Cove today (see the thread in Sightings) was just unbelievable. After making excellent time getting to Fall River, THIS happened:
-To get there, you have to cross over a large bridge, then down a hill to get to the base of the bridge (the battleship is moored right by one of the bridge piers). I took a left to go down the hill and found traffic STOPPED. Not moving at all. All because there was an 18 wheel truck trying to back up to the WORST. SITED. LOADING DOCK. EVER! I mean really REALLY poorly sited. It was perpendicular to the road (which was very narrow) and had NO room for the truck to turn around. So this hapless trucker had to back up form the road, blocking it completely. And he missed the target. He had to keep pulling back out and trying again, inching to the side at a painfully slow rate. In the meantime, the road is totally impassible and I'm stuck on this hill. Moreover, another truck had just stopped in the road so its driver could try to assist the first driver. Driver #2 didn't bother pulling off the road, so he blocked up an entire lane so that what little traffic that managed to squeeze around the first truck had nowhere to go. Finally truck #2 pulled away and traffic started to slowly move. I eventually get down to the bottom of the hill (where I was able to see what had caused all of the above) and take a left, ending up behind a cab behind truck #2
-Truck #2 attempts to make a right-hand turn at a four-way stop sign under a secondary bridge. Guess what? The moron driving it took the turn too tight and SLAMMED HIS TRAILER INTO A BRIDGE SUPPORT! *BANG!!!!* Now he's stuck and has to back up. And he's blocking the very road I need to rurn onto. But first he gets out of his truck to check for damage. The cabbie waved vigorously at the trucker, who gestured right back as he barked something obscene. Finalyl the cab rabbitted off and I carefully pulled aournd the truck to see if I could get to the museum via the next cross-street.
-Then I screwed up trying to get home. Somehow, I totally misread a sign and got onto I-95 southbound instead of northbound. I realized what I was doing quickly, but not quickly enough to get over into the correct lane. The GPS system I'd borrowed from my father started squawking at me for my mistake, and had me take the next exit, then turn back under the highway. Except that first, there was some sort of accident of medical emergency at a building right at this exit, so there were emergency vehicles blocking my way. After getting around them, I took the next left only to find the road closed for construction. And the GPS kept insisting that I turn back to this one road to get back to the highway. It took a good ten minutes to fight my way up to the next actual cross street (after trying one that turned out to be a dead end) and head back for the.....ramp.....where's the ramp! The ramp was GONE. NOT THERE. DEMOLISHED! So now I had the dubious pleasure of following a meandering detour ALL THROUGH DOWNTOWN PROVIDENCE to get back to the damn highway. Took nearly an hour to get back on track. :cry: And I was very anxious to get underway, because there was a line of thunderstorms bearing down on us and a tornado watch was in effect for the very area I was in.
Then, not having learned my lesson the first time, I went the wrong way through another fork in the highway and go to spend another ten minutes on surface streets to get back to I-95.
Thankfully, we got home in one piece, and we were able to laugh at our own stupidity, in light of the incredible events of the day. It was a comedy of errors at that point. :lol:
-To get there, you have to cross over a large bridge, then down a hill to get to the base of the bridge (the battleship is moored right by one of the bridge piers). I took a left to go down the hill and found traffic STOPPED. Not moving at all. All because there was an 18 wheel truck trying to back up to the WORST. SITED. LOADING DOCK. EVER! I mean really REALLY poorly sited. It was perpendicular to the road (which was very narrow) and had NO room for the truck to turn around. So this hapless trucker had to back up form the road, blocking it completely. And he missed the target. He had to keep pulling back out and trying again, inching to the side at a painfully slow rate. In the meantime, the road is totally impassible and I'm stuck on this hill. Moreover, another truck had just stopped in the road so its driver could try to assist the first driver. Driver #2 didn't bother pulling off the road, so he blocked up an entire lane so that what little traffic that managed to squeeze around the first truck had nowhere to go. Finally truck #2 pulled away and traffic started to slowly move. I eventually get down to the bottom of the hill (where I was able to see what had caused all of the above) and take a left, ending up behind a cab behind truck #2
-Truck #2 attempts to make a right-hand turn at a four-way stop sign under a secondary bridge. Guess what? The moron driving it took the turn too tight and SLAMMED HIS TRAILER INTO A BRIDGE SUPPORT! *BANG!!!!* Now he's stuck and has to back up. And he's blocking the very road I need to rurn onto. But first he gets out of his truck to check for damage. The cabbie waved vigorously at the trucker, who gestured right back as he barked something obscene. Finalyl the cab rabbitted off and I carefully pulled aournd the truck to see if I could get to the museum via the next cross-street.
-Then I screwed up trying to get home. Somehow, I totally misread a sign and got onto I-95 southbound instead of northbound. I realized what I was doing quickly, but not quickly enough to get over into the correct lane. The GPS system I'd borrowed from my father started squawking at me for my mistake, and had me take the next exit, then turn back under the highway. Except that first, there was some sort of accident of medical emergency at a building right at this exit, so there were emergency vehicles blocking my way. After getting around them, I took the next left only to find the road closed for construction. And the GPS kept insisting that I turn back to this one road to get back to the highway. It took a good ten minutes to fight my way up to the next actual cross street (after trying one that turned out to be a dead end) and head back for the.....ramp.....where's the ramp! The ramp was GONE. NOT THERE. DEMOLISHED! So now I had the dubious pleasure of following a meandering detour ALL THROUGH DOWNTOWN PROVIDENCE to get back to the damn highway. Took nearly an hour to get back on track. :cry: And I was very anxious to get underway, because there was a line of thunderstorms bearing down on us and a tornado watch was in effect for the very area I was in.
Then, not having learned my lesson the first time, I went the wrong way through another fork in the highway and go to spend another ten minutes on surface streets to get back to I-95.
Thankfully, we got home in one piece, and we were able to laugh at our own stupidity, in light of the incredible events of the day. It was a comedy of errors at that point. :lol: