Hood Canal Bitch

Currently, my life is being made miserable by the Hood Canal Bridge.....or, rather, the absence of it. I'm not the only one, I know. We, out here on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State depend on that frickin' bridge to get us to civilization (aka Seattle). There's a lot of us who commute to areas that are on the other side of that bridge, and not having it there is a major major BITCH.

See, it's like this:

Map

The red line represents the route if I happened to own my own airplane and could fly to my destination. Unfortunately I  don't have a plane. Well I used to have my own plane, but sold it after numerous employers would not submit to my demands for my own personal runway. See I told you there was no benefits in the culinary industry.

The purple line represents how far I have to drive around all that water to get to my destination. On a good day it's 4 1/2-5 hours with no traffic. But of course there's traffic, 'cause everybody else has to drive around too. Before the bridge work happened, the state and counties were pretty good about preparing for the 6 week closure by having transit operations work together, getting extra buses, scheduling them to meet up with one another, and implementing a water shuttle to take passengers across the Hood Canal. The water shuttle? Good idea!

Map2

The green line represents my twice weekly route. I park at a park and ride on one side, take a bus to the passenger ferry shuttle thingy, take a 10 minute ride across the canal, then take another bus to the other park and ride where I have my other car, then drive my car to the Edmonds/Kingston Ferry, wait for that, then there's a 20 minute ride, then drive my car off and proceed to drive 45 more minutes to my Mom's house. Sound like a bitch? It is. But it's the best route for me, and a lot of other people.

Now the water shuttle works fine as long as there's no stormy weather or wind to jeopardize its trips. But c'mon, this is Washington, where rain is the norm! The water shuttle gets canceled once the water starts to get a little choppy, because they are worried about docking and getting people on and off the boat. Today was one of those days....where the shuttle was canceled most of the afternoon. This screws up a lot of people, especially since they don't really have a backup plan when the shuttle can't run. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be worse, and I have to travel again. I don't want to go through what I went through last week, but I may have to. I can't cancel my trip 'cause Mom needs me and my brother is coming into town too, so I think another long trek is in the cards. This whole thing just sucks.

If it weren't for Mom I wouldn't really have to travel off the Peninsula at all during the bridge closure. I could stay up here in cozy little Port Townsend and not miss the tourists who aren't coming. But Mom comes first, so travel I must. They told me in elementary school by the time the Year 2000 came, we'd have flying cars. Where's my &*$%&#@!!! flying car!!!!!???

Comments

[Liz C]

Every time I drive by the traffic signs on Rt 3 I think about you guys up there. Especially with the weather we've been having. Seems like it just can't suck enough.

[Carol]

I use to live a couple of miles from that bridge!