Wednesday, April 16, 2008

FUBAR revisited




This morning my hubby says "hey there's a huge pileup of cars waiting to drive on the sidewalk out here!" So I had to go check it out, and then I was stuck at the window for the next hour watching the clusterf*&k unravel. I know I get way too much pleasure out of this, but I couldn't help myself this morning. I just had to stand at the window with my camera and take some pictures. It was great! Ok, so you know how they are fixing the pipe up the road and the north bound lanes of our street are blocked off by a giant flatbed. Well I guess this morning they forgot to post a sign or block off the entrance to the north bound lanes from the gas station so the drivers, in their infinite wisdom, seeing the traffic in the south bound lanes (which both north and south bound traffic are sharing) thought to themselves, well I'll just go over here on this street which is all empty and has to be loads faster! Then they get to the truck. Well most people just hopped the curb, and drove through the narrow gap to get to where they could drive again. This worked pretty well, except that only one car can get through at a time so by the time 9:15 rolled about there were cars piled up four across ten deep down the street, each vying for their shot at the one car passageway over the sidewalk. Then, some guy going to the military complex across the street from us parks his car on the sidewalk in front of the one car passageway (I didn't see how this happened, and how he didn't notice the steady flow of cars trying to get through, but whatever) and a minibus gets stuck, can't go forward because of the parked car, can't go back because of the traffic jam of cars four across ten deep, and now everyone is stuck. Some guys in the middle of the line kept trying to get people to back up, but Azeris have an awesome sense of entitlement "why should I move for you, I've got every right to be here." Plus, cars kept piling up in the back.
Finally, someone gets the bright idea to move the truck. So about 15-20 Azeri guys get out of their cars, suits, pointed shoes and all, break into the truck, and start to push it out the way. Well they don't get to far, so they come back with boards and sticks to shove under the wheels and this time they finally get it moved about a foot so the minibus can make its way through and traffic can flow again. By the way, during all this I saw at least five or six cops standing around watching the mess, not getting involved because it's not their jurisdiction, I've also got a picture of a police mobile going through the one car passageway over the sidewalk. HA! Anyway, I took a bunch of photos, and I have to say that these are definitely worth more than my descriptions by far.