Just Like Mapquest

Many of you may be aware that Cleveland was flooded yesterday. My direct route home and the route of many other people in the area was filled with water, up to two feet of water in many places. My office let out at 4:30 because the electricity went out in my building, and I was excited to get home early. Normally if I am let out at this time, I get home by 4:45. This is one of the advantages of living downtown. One of the disadvantages of living downtown is that it floods when we get a storm like we got yesterday. Instead of getting home at 4:45, I pulled in my driveway at 6:30. As I sat in traffic, I dialed up my inner Mapquest and came up with the following route.

1. Get on the Shoreway like you normally would to head West toward Lakewood.

2. Sit still in traffic for 40 minutes.

3. Drive on the side of the road to the lane you usually get in to exit onto 2 West.

4. See the exit for 2 West (as pictured) is flooded and head back three lanes to get onto 90 East. 5. Drive through the flooded lane until you get on higher ground.

6. Get on 90 East and call Roz and say “I’m home free!” until you realize that all the exits on 90 East are also flooded, and there is no way to turn around in either direction because of the traffic jam.

7. Jump onto 271 South and get off to go to the bathroom at the McDonalds in Willoughby because of the iced coffee you drank before you left work.

8. Sit in traffic with all the other people who live in the East suburbs.

9. Take the exit for 480 West and head to the State Road exit which puts you Southwest of the city.

10. Get off at State Road and head home.

11. Don’t forget to have a small panic attack every time you are stuck on a bridge or under a bridge because of what happened in Minneapolis yesterday.

Once I got home, I jumped on my bike and went down to Lake Erie, which was quite calm. I can only assume this is because half of it was sitting over on the Shoreway.