traffic | Change Is Hard

I started physical therapy this morning to strengthen my shoulders. Years ago I had an issue with my right rotator cuff, and did PT in an effort to avoid surgery. It worked. Lately I have noticed the same pain in both my shoulders so I asked my Nurse Practitioner for a script to start PT.

I’m scheduled for four appointments, 2 this week and 2 next week, all at 7 a.m., at a physical therapy place about 6 miles away from home. Should be easy. But as we all know….

*It was a chilly but beautiful morning.*

The state of Michigan is working on the freeways around here, and all 3 of the nearby entrance ramps, going north or south, are closed. So when I left home at 6:40 to go the 6 miles to my 7 a.m. appointment I shouldn’t have been shocked to see all the surface streets bumper to bumper.

But I was.

What was I thinking? I’d forgotten about how awful commuting is around here, especially when the freeway is essentially closed. I’ll spare you the gory details but I was 15 minutes late for my first PT appointment.

After my workout, in an effort to find a more strategic route before Wednesday’s appointment, I drove around in ever expanding circles, trying to find a way onto the freeway. Eventually it was obvious that wasn’t going to work. The freeway is not an option. (I guess thousands of commuters had already come to that conclusion, hence my morning.)

I headed home, down a dirt road I rarely travel, through farms and woods, with little traffic. Which was good because I had to come to a dead stop to avoid running over a bunny rabbit skipping across the road in front of me. And shortly after that, at eye level on a tree right next to the road was a male pileated woodpecker with most of his face inside a tree. If I’d been in my passenger seat I’d have been able to reach out and touch him. He was so focused he didn’t move as I drove slowly by wishing for my camera. And as I drove up the last bit of dirt road, close to home I had to stop again as a muskrat ambled from one swampy area and across the road to another.

If I hadn’t been late to my PT and attempting to find a better route I’d never have seen the rabbit, the woodpecker or the muskrat. The combination of all three made me forget my morning commute frustrations. I’m still smiling.

*Mom, I’ll help you do your shoulder exercises here at home!*

I don’t have photos, but I know you have a sense of imagination…so I’ll leave it to you to picture it all. And later today I’ll go out and figure out a better way to get to that next appointment, but it feels like I’m going to have to leave home at 6 a.m. to make it on time.

Remember when you were a kid and August lasted forever? Long lazy days of heat and fun? I guess once adulthood shows up August loses its luster. But for me this particular August has gone on forever. Let me share why.

Parking lot mayhem

I work in a pretty big building; 4 floors, 3 wings. Several hundred of us work here. At the beginning of August they began redoing the parking lots and they started with the lot outside our wing. As you can see it wasn’t just a resurface job.

There are three lots that surround the building, each lot will take about a month. For the month of August we in our wing are parking offsite about a mile away. We take shuttle vans back and forth to that lot which sounds worse than it turned out to be. They have five vans, each seating 10 passengers running nonstop between our building and the lot especially in the morning and evenings, but also at lunch if you want to go to that sort of effort just to run out to eat.

We have watched the progress while trying to block out the constant pounding of heavy machines, the beeping of trucks backing up, the shake of our monitors and the floor under our feet. In the early stages the noise and vibration was overwhelming. It seemed like they were moving the dirt from here to there, then back again, and we saw no progress. But just last week they started paving. We were excited!

Harley paver

Our lot is finally finished…and I only have two more days of riding the shuttle back and forth. After a long day it’s difficult to wait in line to catch a ride over to your car. On the other hand, we’ve gotten to know people we never would have spent time talking to when we could park on site. And people are actually laughing and kidding each other on our 10 minute trip.

FINISHED!

Heard tonight, from the back of the van: “We should have sing-a-longs! (starts singing…the wheels of the bus go round and round…) We could tape it and put it on YouTube! From the front passenger seat “I have some duct tape in my purse.” From the back of the bus while still singing she interrupts herself to say…”Tape as in video, not as in duct!” From the front of the bus…”With your singing duct is more appropriate.” The entire bus laughs as we unload for the long commute home.

That’s another story – my commute. It used to be 40 minutes each way if no one made any mistakes that would cause problems. Now days it’s more likely an hour. A lot of the time, particularly on my trip home it looks like this.

Nothing but brake lights

And nights when there’s a big act at our local outdoor arena? Forget about it. Tonight Maroon 5 AND Kelly Clarkson are playing. I didn’t even try to get home via the freeway. It’s a big holiday weekend coming up too, and half our state will be on my freeway heading north for a last camping fling before summer winds down.

So my month of August has looked a lot like this:

On the road. Again.

Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: traffic

PT fixes more than my shoulder

Remember the Augusts of your childhood?