h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes, I expect he would have designed a doozy of a path.

...as simple a device as that and one would be wandering in there forever if restricted to a path with one hand on the wall...

Yesterday

I left work with the Cap Metro website telling me the next 300 was due in seven minutes - enough time for me to get to the bus stop. Or it should have been. As I was getting close to the stop I could see the bus on the far side of the lights... which had just gone green... and I'm on the opposite side of the road... and I couldn't get across because of the traffic

So I missed that one by 30 seconds Never mind, as far as I can make out that's the bus that should have been here ten minutes ago because there's no bus scheduled for this time, so I shouldn't have more than ten, maybe 15 minutes to wait for the next one, or it could even be along in the next five minutes because this bus is supposed to run every 15 minutes.

Nope. 30 minutes til the next one And then, of course, two come along at the same time. And the first one goes sailing past because it's not picking up any passengers, and the second one gets stuck at the light because it was picking someone up at the bus stop there, and I'm think that if I miss my second bus because that first one didn't stop for me it's a 20-minute wait for the next one and a two-hour journey home

I made it, just. But it was still a 90-minute ride home. A journey that should only take an hour, and which in a car could be done in 30 minutes.

Sigh. I hate Thursdays. And the 300. And Cap Metro.

And I think @CapMetroBlues is woman, not a bloke.

My worst commuting disaster of all time was on January 20 or 21, 1978, when a storm dumped 20 inches of snow during the work day. They closed my workplace at about 2:00 p.m. The snow made the five-mile bus ride from the office to the subway station take several hours. There were big rear-drive cars spinning their wheels in deep snow ahead of the bus. I walked part of the way home. It took about 6 hours to get home.

Then, two weeks later, there was the humongous Blizzard of 1978, which closed down my workplace [and the whole state] for a solid week. What I remember from that storm was the aching back I got from shoveling the front steps of the rooming house that I lived in.

How does it compare to this snowstorm we've been hearing about for the past couple of days, Paul?

That has to depend on where you are.

I think that the Weather Service has given the name Jonas to the storm. Here are snow totals for the Ditrict of Columbiua:
AIRPORTS

REAGN NATIONAL AIRP 17.8 inches
BWI AIRPORT 29.2 "
DULLES INTERNATIONAL 29.3 "

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

...DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA...
1 WSW NATIONAL ZOO 22.4 in.
1 E WASHINGTON 22.3 in.
ADAMS MORGAN 21.0 in.

There are places in Virginia that got 30 to 36 inches of snow.

In new York City, the storm "ranked No. 2 in terms of snowfall accumulation in New York City history with 26.8 inches (68 cm) by midnight, just short of the record set in 2006"
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather-idUSKCN0V107L

The governors of ten states declared states of emergency.

But except for Cape Cod and the islands, Massachusetts got minimal snow -- just four inches in my neighborhood. We dodged a big bullet. The next one might hit us. Who knows?