I had already needed to stop off for an oil change along the way, so I finished that while still on Ogden Avenue in Downers (Click the title of this post for a map of my route). I was down to about two gallons of gas, but decided to just head out and get some miles under my belt before I stopped again, as it was still 3:30 pm and rush hour was just starting up. I tried to stay off the tollway because I'd heard it was already jammed up, and tried to make it along the older two-lane highways. Of course that was a bigger mistake, because any place where the major thoroughfares met, it would take up to 20 minutes to cross that last block to the intersection. Add to that any old diagonal highways meeting in a "six corner" (like Joliet Road, the old Rt. 66 in the southwest suburbs), and I was looking at half an hour just to traverse the width of a Jewel parking lot. Could have just stopped somewhere for dinner, but I would have been overstuffed or overserved, and traffic still wouldn't have cleared up.
I finally stopped for gas somewhere in Hickory Hills... I just managed to drive for three hours on only one gallon of gas. Another hour and five miles later, I had to park under a viaduct and get out to clear a snowdrift that had built up on my trunk just behind my rear window.
The end result was, I left work at 3 pm, and got home at 8 pm. Average speed: 8 miles per hour. Next moring, I got back to work only a little later than normal, and found that everyone else had the same horror stories.
In a time like that, best I can do is keep some favorite tunes in the car CD and console myself that every other driver on the road was having the same conniptions. And at least an errant 737 didn't hit me.
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