My Daily Battle...

...And a pain in my butt!

Traffic.

Although really, that picture isn't very accurate of my daily commutes. I've managed to find multiple routes of all city roads that get me to and from work so I can avoid the madness that is the highway/interstate system in the Denver-metro area. The following picture is more of what I see.

Going through the city I get to and from work much quicker (45 minutes in the morning and an hour in the evening), and I usually avoid most of the crashes; however, there are still plenty on busy city streets as well (listening to traffic reports on the radio is always interesting). Going through the city isn't all it's cracked up to be though. It's still very stop-and-go due to traffic lights and horrible drivers who switch lanes at the last second or a moments notice causing others to slam on their brakes in order to avoid hitting them. This is both A) very annoying, and B) not so great for the car. I can't say it's any less stop-and-go on the interstates though. There you are just barely moving and stopping-and-going. This kind of flow in traffic is very frustrating to me. Needless to say, I often feel stressed, frazzled, and anxious about 2 minutes into the drive. Almost every day I worry about making it to work on time because I never know what I'll run into on the road (Colorado has some impressively bad drivers). I don't at all like that this is the start to my day 5 out of 7 days of the week, nor do I like the fact that I spend 2 hours of each day in the car. I do find ways to make it useful every now and then, such as calling people to catch up on life or practicing Spanish with my learning CDs. But in general, I wish I could say it wasn't part of my daily life. I definitely took less traffic for granted when I lived in Springfield, IL, but I never will again, no matter where I live.