Weekend Road in anticlimatic

Things feel like 2008 again. Like they’re falling apart. It’s concerning, enough to keep one up at night. There’s enough to worry and despair over, the collapse of civilization should be well towards the bottom of our concerns, but alas there it is on the top 10.

I like to get away on the weekends to forget about these kinds of things, escaping north to the family cabin on the beach where all but loons and waves are quiet. At night the only lights are stars and the ore freighters on the lake horizon; silent twinkling caterpillars crawling their way to the St Mary’s Channel. The cabin my dad built and died in. I like being there. I feel closest to him there.

To get there I have to cross the Mackinaw Bridge, which is a pretty impressive structure connecting large land masses by 4 lanes of traffic. As such, it is a bit of a bottleneck for many different travelers heading to many different places both north and south across it. So when things go wrong on the bridge, which often they do, traffic can find itself backed up for hours. I had never seen it as backed up as it was this weekend.

Upon merging onto the freeway, some 10 miles south of the bridge yet, cars were already filling every lane at a dead stop. My initial instinct was to turn around immediately- but I was stuck on an entrance ramp that was one way, and a very long one at that- so going back the way I came, even carefully along the shoulder, was not a safe enough option. Eventually, I merged with traffic on the freeway, and put it in park, and there we sat for a minute marveling, speculating, and brainstorming.

A few cars ahead a large camper had pulled halfway onto the shoulder. I’m not certain as to why, but I assumed he was trying to block cars from driving down the shoulder. I knew there was an exit 2 miles away, and rationalized that if I applied my right blinker I could drive two miles down the shoulder to the exit, much like one would if they were turning right down any side street off of the road.

I was in a truck, so I thought I could get past that camper by driving through the field/ditch just a little bit. The truck tipped much further to the right than I thought it would as we rounded it, but we made it back on the shoulder no worse for the wear. It felt a lot longer than 2 miles, and I was feeling more than a little guilty passing so many stopped cars (not really), but eventually we did make it to the exit, and got off the freeway.

Side streets got us 10 miles and right up to the final entrance ramp to the bridge almost immediately, skipping several hours of sitting still. The first half of the bridge was unavoidably slow. Another camper was blocking the passing lane on the two-lane road (people didn’t have to merge until about the center of the bridge, but he fancied himself some kind of road police- not wanting anyone to get ahead of him. I was content to crawl along in my place, especially after having skipped so much of it just prior.

At some point some hippie in a big hurry came barreling down the passing lane in a Subaru Forrester, laying on the horn in an attempt to get the two-lane-hogging camper to move over and let him through. The camper would have none of it, and Subi got in line behind him.

At the middle of the bridge we finally saw what the problem was. Both lanes on the other side of the road were blocked off. A large Ford F-150 was parked with it’s nose mangled a bit, and a Trike Motorcycle was parked next to it with the entire front of it missing. It was just a mangled wad of metal and two rear tires–

–I’d read later that a 78 year old man was crossing the bridge in the left lane, which are these green grates for most of the bridge. The grates are notorious for moving your vehicle around in weird and uncontrollable ways. They feel like they are yanking your steering wheel back and forth. I always avoid them if I can, or stay very focused when I’m on them. Apparently the old guy was driving on them, and got spooked. He overcorrected and lost control, jumping the median and barreling into oncoming traffic. Dead on impact.

Traffic coming from the other direction was being directed, one painful car at a time, OVER the median curb- which is about the size of a normal curb on a city street. Guys were out there with wooden blocks and shims for tires if vehicles were too low to deal with such a big object to drive over. Needless to say, southbound traffic had it much worse than we did going northbound. At least we had one whole lane that didn’t involve having to drive over a giant curb. As we were passing the people lined up for that circus, we saw one guy getting arrested in the middle of traffic. I’m not sure what he did, but for some reason I probably wouldn’t blame him. Hot and stuck, is there anything worse?

At the toll both we were able to skip most of the line again with the commuter lane that I pay for in advance. Traffic stretched down US2 for an eternity, but we were able to get through it to get to the truck stop diner for some well deserved breakfast. Unfortunately our slog wasn’t quite over.

After breakfast, I hatched a plan to take side streets to get back to the freeway. The standard direction was backed up to kingdom come with people trying to merge heading south. Even though we were heading north, the line didn’t know or care. So I was going to turn left out of the diner, the opposite direction traffic was stuck trying to go, so I would increase my odds of people letting me through.

Unfortunately for me traffic was at an absolute standstill by the time we attempted it. People had parked their cars and were out walking around. There was no other way to get out except through three lanes of stopped traffic. I saw there with my left blinker flashing so everybody would know I was just trying to get out, nearly in despair, but suddenly realized that with a little diplomatic tweaking of the situation I could negotiate a path forward.

The guy blocking me in the first lane had his window cracked- young frat boy looking kid in a slick car. I saw he had a little room to pull up, and if he did, it would create an opening just big enough for me to fit behind him, between two vehicles in the middle lane, and between two more in the turning lane.

I leaned out of my window and yelled HEY BRO. BRO! He looked at me, and I used hand gestures and an enthusiastic smile to communicate what I wanted from him. He was smart, he got it immediately and pulled forward. I saw the path out, and rejoiced- but just as I began to go, the car behind the guy I just had move swooped in to cut me off and close the distance between it and the car in front of them.

The driver (unsurprisingly) was a woman, and in the passenger seat was her boyfriend. He also had his window cracked. I leaned out the window once again and appealed to the better angels of their natures. YO! HEY! COULD YOU BACK UP PLEASE? I’M JUST TRYING TO GET OUT. I’M GOING WEST. NOT EAST TO GET AHEAD OF YOU. DUDE. PLEASE. He relayed my message to his girlfriend, which got them fighting. I could tell he understood the deal, but was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Having to support his girlfriend being stupid, but also negotiate with a guy yelling out his window at him in a “stuck together” parked environment. I was being nice about it, but it was still pressure. For some reason the girl did not want to drive back, and the boyfriend had stopped responding or looking at me. Instead he just stared straight forward in a kind of awkward rage. I’m not sure they were getting along well before that.

I thought all was lost, but a bunch of bikers who had been parked behind this car and were watching the whole thing unfold, came up and also started yelling at the girl to back up so I could get out. At least some people understand the concept that a win for someone can be a win for anyone if they help. The pressure was finally enough to get the girl to move, and she backed up. I threaded the needle, blew her kisses as I drove through (both of them smiled) and made it out of there just as planned.

All in all I feel I cut through that mess as well as I could have.