Rollin' rollin' rollin
Okay, so, this obsessive, nearly OCD, urge to keep my tires rolling has gotten the better of me. I admit it. I finally admit it. Fine, I'm dumb.
On the way home from Santa Cruz, I was slowed and stopped by an accident on 17. Traffic wasn't exactly progressing at Kitt speeds to begin with, so when it slowed to five miles an hour at the summit coming over 17, I wasn't exactly a happy camper.
Not that I was upset. Not at all. I was too busy working on "relaxing" and "enjoying the drive" and "not stressing" to be upset with the drive. The stop and go traffic for two miles, however, did a number on my right hamstring, though, so my patience. I fired up the navigation system, entered Home as my destination, and told the route calculator to "avoid route from here for 2 miles... go!"
It found me a route at the next exit, Black Creek Road, up the mountain, along 35 and down into Los Gatos. Eh, how bad could that trip be? I wasn't sure where the accident was, however. At the rate I was going, I wouldn't be home until 5:13 PM, surely the other route would be faster, right?
So, just before the Black Creek Road exit, I bullied my way from the left lane to the exit lane, and exited. Unfortunately, I had turned off my navigation system during the intermediate stop and go traffic. By the time I had exited the road, I was unable to use the "avoid route from here" feature, and every route I took told me to turn around and get back on 17.
So, I went by memory.
I drove up Black Creek Road, zoom zoom zoom. A black Honda was following me remarkably closely, so I drove a little faster than I wanted to go to lose the car.
Until I caught up to the BMW in front of me slowed by the Cadillac in front of it. How the heck did that happen? When the Caddy pulled over for the three of us, and we all took off, I started looking for another place to pull over for the Honda. If I'm going miles out of my way to avoid a traffic accident, I'm going to enjoy the ride.
Which I did, until I turned onto 35 off Black Creek Road.
Have you driven along 35 off Black Creek Road? It's a windy one lane road that doesn't deserve the State Road designation. Sure, it's had lovely scenery alongside the road, but, goodness, there are a lot of scary blind turns on that road.
Along I went for a couple miles, not quite relaxing on the drive, not quite nerverous but not quite enjoying the drive. Somewhere along the drive, I heard on the talk radio traffic every eight minutes, that the accident had been cleared. Yay! Except I was on the wrong road at this point.
I continued along 35, stopping at a sign at Gist Road, wondering if this was the right hand turn I recalled from my view of the route. It didn't look like it, so I kept going straight.
The turn at the next stop sign looked promising. S.R. 35 turned into a two lane road in front of me, with a sign that read San Francisco ahead, Los Gatos to the right. I recalled the map said turn right to head into Los Gatos, to I turned right, and started heading down the mountain.
Right back to Black Creek Road.
Turns out, there are TWO Black Creek Roads, if you don't realize that one is Bear Creek Road and one is Black Road, and you've just mixed up the two, combining them in your mind. Tragically, they form the two legs of a triangle with 35 forming the third leg of the triangle, a very scary, windy third leg of the triangle. I had just driven 45 minutes, hopping out of the car to pee along the side of the road because the drive was taking too long, to end up getting back on 17 at the same place I had exited 15 miles before.
Sure, traffic was moving now. I should have stayed on 17 and not exited in the first place.
My arrival time back home after my little adventure? 5:12PM.