SERENDIPITIOUS ROUTE DISCOVERIES

If you were driving on the Upper West Side yesterday afternoon, you know how unbelievably nightmarish traffic got in every possible direction. Due to the AIDS WALK, an area nearly 40 blocks long and stretching from Central Park to the Hudson River became completely debilitated as all traffic was stopped to let participants walk uninhibited along the event route. So for 7 hours everyone caught inside of that circuit and everyone approaching it came to a near standstill.

There was no way eastbound out of it because the traverses through Central Park were closed for a parade on Fifth Avenue. And there was no way directly southbound out of it because a food festival had Ninth Avenue shut down. And for some odd reason the traffic headed down Broadway to Columbus Circle didn't move a foot for over a quarter hour, and no traffic could be seen coming uptown from there. So something was going down in that neck of the woods too.

My passenger had to get to Tenth and 43rd, so I wiggled my way to 66th and cut across to West End. The downtown flow was moving along until we approached 57th, where all the traffic from Ninth had been diverted. So I shot further west down 59th and instead of entering the slow traffic on the West Side Highway, I flew up the cruise terminal ramp and then cut right over to the empty turning lanes for 42nd Street. We did in 10 minutes what would have taken over half an hour to accomplish.