Starting to pick it up

Here we are in week 2. Although with starting Week 1 on Tuesday, I didn't have all of my classes until yesterday. A fact that is strong in my mind as one of my Monday classes is Foundations of Biblical Preaching with Karoline Lewis, who is currently across the open space in Northwest talking on her cell phone...side note...remember that post I made last week of being surrounded by academics? This situation applies to that too.

But I diguress.

On Monday's I don't need to be on campus till 12:30, and I took advantage of that yesterday to hammer out a bunch of work for my single online class. However, I wrap up right at 4:30, which is not a fun time to attempt to drive across the metro. Behold the power of rush hour.

That being said, I've discovered a handy website that will show a map of the main driving routes and the current driving conditions traffic-wise. Its a good thing to have in the back pocket. I glanced at it right before packing up the computer and noticed that the stretch of 35W between 280 and 694 was moving really slowly. In my experience, this has been the worst stretch of the evening commute.

A fellow commuter that goes to my new church keyed me in to a tip a week or so back...buzz over to Snelling and go north. With the traffic report as it was, I decided to give that a shot yesterday. Now, I wish I could say that it worked perfectly and there were no delays at all, but driving any road at that time of day is going to be slow. That being said, I reached the intersection between 35W and 694 within about 15 minutes and as I looked down 35, I could see that it was backed up t the extreme. Probably would have been 30 minutes or more had I gone that way.

So it would seem that I had made a good choice. That being said, I also realized that instead of taking Como over to Snelling (which does curve ever so slightly to the south) I should have gone over on Larpenter. I'll remember that next time.

You know, I think I'm starting to get the hang of this.