Sunday, March 1, 2009

Traffic is weird

My son and I left at 6:30 AM yesterday to get up to Winter Park for a day of skiing. I figured we'd get there by 8 or 8:30. More like 9:30. I-70 was a parking lot. We were reduced to about 10 mph for about 45 minutes. I assumed it was just ski traffic.

Nope. Right near Georgetown, we passed by three big-horned sheep grazing by the side of the road. Traffic picked up to 70 mph right after that. Yes, traffic was at a stand-still because people wanted to see the sheep.

Now, I grant you that these are cool animals, and they're usually pretty difficult to see. But I was still kinda pissed.

But this got me thinking... I didn't particularly care to slow down to see the sheep. But I had to because others did. Probably the vast majority of the drivers were in my boat, forced to slow down because of the interests of a pivotal minority. How many drivers does it actually take to make an entire freeway slow down to a crawl? Probably not too many. And yes, I know this is the stuff that kept Campbell Scott's character up at nights in "Singles."

All the more reason to take the Supertrain.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

First of all, if they want to look at the sheep, they should pay the $8 and drive up Mt Evans, there are alot more of them.

Second, the Skitrain is the coolest thing ever invented! It was the only thing that impressed me when I moved to CO from DC in high school.

Seth Masket said...

Okay, I'll try the skitrain.