Thursday, December 16, 2010

One more piece

Ben flew out here yesterday.  We tossed around the idea of him taking the train back to the apartment, but decided against it.  He was flying in 20 minutes before the last train of the night, and he had a checked bag.  After a 4+ hour lay over in Las Vegas, he called because his flight was delayed by almost an hour.  I fell asleep.  When I awoke, I had mere moments to get out of the house to go pick him up.  I took the world's fastest shower, grabbed the boy, and took off into the night.

Ben called while I was driving.  No worries, I was almost across the bridge.  And that's when tragedy struck.  Not really.  Nobody died or anything, but while I was on the phone with Ben, I took the wrong turn on the 405 bridge.  You need to understand this behemoth in order to really grasp what I did.  You see it's 2 layers, the top carries westbound 30 and southbound 405 traffic, the bottom carries the opposite.  Ok, not a big deal.  Except there are 4 off-shoots that you can take in either direction.  I-5, I-405, OR-30, etc.  It gets confusing.  The fastest way to the airport is I-5 to Lombard, which is also OR-30 bypass.  So....I took the OR-30 exit from the bridge.  WRONG.  I know.  But just look at the NE end of the bridge.  It's a big ol' mess!


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I ended up turning a 25-30 minute drive into a 50 minute drive.  I was tired and out of it and lost in Portland.  On a happy note, I was able to drive by OMSI.  So...I could potentially get back there on my own again (if I'm 1/2 asleep and get kind of lost).  Poor Ben was exhausted but such a good sport.  The way home was not as eventful (save for me forgetting where the entrance to the interstate was).  We got home late, and I went from sharing a bed with 30 pounds of man to 230 pounds of man.  So happy to have Ben here, but it makes it painfully obvious that we're still missing a piece...

2 comments:

  1. I'm hoping that doesn't happen to me when I have to drive down to that airport on Sunday morning. Driving for 3 hours on what should be my day to sleep in means that I might get a little lost but there are worse things that can happen.

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  2. if you cross the Willamette, you've gone too far. If you cross it on either the Fremont bridge or the Marquam bridge, you'll be dizzy upon landing.

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