doo bee doobeedee dooo dooo...CROSSTOWN TRAFFIC!

5:00 and I'm off work and I'm off work for 24 hours which is a rare and precious thing these days brethren and sistren.
I'm out the door and into my car before the door has closed behind me and I hit the ignition and the gas and the gear shift and the clutch all at the same time and I am jumping forward and ready to zoom like a MUTHA when I find myself locked into the parking lot by a seemingly endless flow of traffic.

Here's the deal.
Generally I head out the parking lot, on to the street, make a quick left and I'm on the freeway. But 5 p.m. is different because the traffic crawls, and I'm all adrenalized and my wound uppedness is all wanting to unwind and fast and I just can't do that sitting motionless in a motionless car.
So to hell with the left! I'm going straight across the road. I've got moves baby. I can run through the briars and run through the brambles and run through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go. There was but one obstacle in front of me, a freaking imported Daihatsu Hijet of all things. He was making the left into the endless clogged pipe of Circle Drive. My hands drumming on the wheel, cursing and swearing, rolling the window up and rolling the window down I waited for him to make the turn and I hauled out wide around him and I went straight across. I saw him glare at me for a quick half second as I passed, and the driver of that little Daihatsu was a strange looking guy. He was balding, deeply tanned, like golf pro big money tanned, with hair so white the contrast almost had it glowing. Big bushy white eyebrows and an equally white fu manchu mustache to top it off completed his look.
I gave a smile in response to his glare then boom! down Ave. C, and a sharp and screeching left on to 38th Street where there isn't a single vehicle waiting at the light to cross Idylwyld. (Only madmen and lunatics cross Idylwyld at Rush Hour!)

Bam! The light goes green and I hit drive and move out of a cloud of dust express bound for glory all the way over to Quebec Ave. This is another easy left, the common misconception being that if the main vessels are closed, these arteries will be even more jammed. They're deserted, wide open like my throttle is when I fishtail out and head North bound for Circle, having bypassed the majority of commuters. Or so I thought.
There was a back up to make the right on to Circle, five or six cars, too patiently awaiting too large a gap that will never come. Screw these guys too I think and I go up over a curb (4 to da W to da D awww yeeaaa) and through 3 parking lots to beat them all onto Circle and half block ahead.

I'm jammed in good and crossing the bridge. Coming up on to the 14th st overpass I can see the traffic is at a standstill and I see it before most people do because I drive the road 2 blocks ahead not the one right in front of me. I swing over into the exit lane, hit 14th along with maybe half a dozen other drivers perceptive and impatient enough to have made an alternate choice, and then it's a wild zig zag of streets and alleyways I know like the back of my hand, bypassing everybody on the way to Preston at 8th where the traffic always thins out.
Now listen people, here's the thing. I did not stop on my commute home. For me there was traffic, but I was constantly in motion. At no point was I stopped dead for an extended period. I was always moving, always at speed.
So when I pulled on to Preston and pulled up right behind a little freakin' white Daihatsu Hijet you might have thought me perturbed. You might have thought I felt defeated to see that with all my manoueverings and machinations I was still one car length behind. I wasn't. I was ecstatic!
Here's why.
It's not about getting a car length ahead. It's not about getting home sooner. It's about not stopping. It's about not sitting still and always moving.
25 minutes later we may have found ourselves at the same point in time space again, the Daihatsu and I. But I knew that he crawled all the way there. He travelled at an average speed of about 5 km/hr. I on the other hand was consistently moving at about 80k.
According to the theory of relativity, the old man in the Daihatsu aged more than I did in that 25 minutes, because for me, less time had passed. It might be an imperceptibly small chunk of time, but it was time gained nonetheless. And that my friends, is priceless.