traffic jam

Just for fun, this is posted from the midst of the worst Cairo traffic jam I’ve ever experienced. There was a bit of advance warning… I phoned a friend who’d left campus on a 7 PM bus, and she said she was still nowhere close to home by 9:15.

That’s when I left campus. The first half hour was no traffic at all, and I thought I might’ve gotten lucky. Not so. This is ridiculous.

And it reminds me… We did have a similar rainstorm in October 2008. That was the last time. They’re easy to remember, because the highway system more or less collapses like this, whenever such storms occur.

Since it more or less never rains here, the road drainage systems just aren’t built to handle it; it’d be a waste of resources. Much more efficient just to put up with this sort of traffic hell once every 18 months or so. It’s no more frequent than that.

Santa Fe, New Mexico is another place I’ve lived where roads sometimes more or less shut down under similar circumstances.

Ugh… A student next to me said we’re also now driving on a flat right front tire! And we are now stopping to change it. This is terrible. It’s really cold on the bus, too.