Well, not Elm Street. Penn Avenue. Fucking Penn Avenue.
Explain, you say?
Well alrighty then.

Right now the parkway west (I-376) is closed every weekend for construction from Churchill to the Squirrel Hill tunnels. The detour basically funnels three lanes of expressway traffic down the one little lane of the Churchill Exit, down Penn Avenue which, while a main artery through the city of Pittsburgh, is also only one lane either way and is still made partially of brick. Needless to say, on the weekends Penn Avenue looks like the artery of a sweaty guy named Veto who’s been eating nothing but fried bacon and butter sandwiches dipped in mayonnaise for the past fifteen years.
And who do you think lives right at the top of Penn Avenue just about a mile from the Churchill Exit?
That’s right. Me.
And who works, babysits and attends class in Squirrel Hill, the place where all the detourees from the parkway are going?
Right again. Me.
I thought I had it beat. By this late in the summer I have worked out a decent system in which I head down Penn Avenue for class every Saturday morning before the traffic has backed up too incredibly badly and then when class lets out at 12:15 I head all the way out to Allegheny River Boulevard via Washington Boulevard and follow the river all the way back up to Penn Hills and then cut the back way through Churchill on Sandy Creek Road, ending up right at the Churchill exit, but without touching any of the construction or traffic. Granted, this is like, 30 miles out of my way, but it still gets me home faster than sitting in traffic all the way back up Penn Avenue. So this is what I did today. Only when I turned onto Sandy Creek, it was closed too. I ended up having to take some assbackward detour that brought me out several miles east of where I wanted to be and added an extra 45 minutes to my trip home. You haven’t lived until you’ve marinated in a puddle of your own backsweat on a 90 degree day while some bald dude in a red SUV cranks his subwoofers all the way up and your Elantra, which is weakly trying to play Dave Matthews, is bouncing along to the rhythm of Fifty Cent.
I took refuge in the sanctity of my apartment till about 5:20 when I decided it was feasible to begin the slow trek down Penn Ave to go babysit in Squirrel Hill. Normally I would have gone the back way, but it was closed, so I was pretty much limited to Penn Avenue. Little did I know there was a Steelers game tonight. So I sat in traffic again, oozing down Penn Avenue at a rate of a quarter mile every ten minutes. I called ahead to the family I was sitting for and told them I’d be late. A trip that, during the week would take about 15 minutes, took me 45. It wasn’t as bad as the earlier trip home from class-it only resulted in a semi permanent grimace of pain as opposed to a quart of sweat and a low threatening growl emanating from parts of me previously unknown.
I felt pretty good coming back home. It was almost midnight and I figured I had missed the post game traffic. Smooth sailing from here, right? RIGHT??
I had noticed earlier I was low on gas but opted not to stop for gas in the ghetto after dark, figuring I could just wake up early tomorrow and fill up my tank. But alas, there was a major accident blocking the half of Penn Avenue that would take me home.
I was pretty close to tears now. There was no way I was going to venture into the ghetto in the dark late at night with almost no gasoline in the car so I turned around, went back to the nearest gas station and fuelled up, before wandering into the back roads of Wilkinsburg in an attempt to get home sometime before sunrise. I’m being entirely honest when I say that it is not inconceivable that driving through Wilkinsburg after dark could result in getting car jacked or worse. It happens there all the time. So I drove in what I thoguht was the right direction, getting more and more nervous as it got darker, less street lights, worn street signs with no names. I started getting nervous when the signs pointing towards Penn Avenue were so covered with graffiti that I couldn’t see an arrow pointing anywhere, so I kept going straight, missing Penn Avenue entirely. I finally ended up finding an entrance to the parkway east, got on that and got off at the Churchill Exit east, again going several miles out of my way to circle back to a Churchill exit in order to get home.

I don’t think I’ll be leaving the house much tomorrow. I’ll be too busy clinging to the nearest pillow and thanking the gods of PennDOT that I don’t have to be out on the roads.