Background:
I have worked a number of jobs on co-op and internships, and all
of them were a good distance away from my house. On average
they were about 45-60 minutes away. Working that far away gave
me a good deal of time on the beatiful highways of America.
Now to be clear, I hate traffic jams, especially on an hour long commute
into and home from an 8 hour work day. They just suck.
Traffic jams can be caused by any number of things...accidents, breakdowns,
rubber necking, as examples. Also there is those
mysterious "no reason" traffic jams. The ones where your stuck
in a traffic jam, and all of a sudden your moving, no accident, no
breakdown, no construction, seemingly no reason.
"The Federal Highway Administration estimates that 60 percent
of traffic jams are in this ''non-recurring'' category,
which also includes those jams triggered by rubberneckers."
This leaves 40% of traffic jams unexplained. What gives?
I found out early one feburary morning, and I will
never be the same again.
It was early, damn early, and cold, damn cold. I was heading to
work, it was still pretty dark out. I was still half asleep,
not having
had my coffee yet and being so damn early. The roads were still
fairly empty, everyone else in the world having enough good
sense not to get up this early. Yet about half way there there
was a back up. I figured construction, or an maybe someone fell
asleep
and crashed. But as we crept along, there didn't seem to
be an evidence of either. The traffic started moving again eventually
(about
5 miles later). As I started speeding back up, out of the corner
of my eye, i saw a flash or red near the woods on the side of the highway.
I glanced over and I saw something that chills me to this
day. I saw one these:
He was driving a miniature car-like contraption:
Figure 2 - Illustration of the "gnome car" might look like
so i started thinking...what was that? what was it doing?
why does it have yellow polka dots? did i put sugar or crack in my
coffee?
Then I put 2 and 2 together.
Traffic Jam Gnomes (TJG).
There must have been a reason those little guys were near where the
traffic lightened up, and dammit i was gonna get to the bottom of it!