How I Spent a Sunny Saturday

Yesterday was a beautiful 80 degrees and sunny; a great day for a bike ride, sitting in the park with a book, gardening…

I got up and loaded up my car with old paint cans and cleaning supplies to drop off at the city’s Household Hazardous Waste and E-Cycling event. I figured I would make a quick trip to drop off my recycling, and then go do something outside to enjoy the weather. Unfortunately, the trip was not so quick. There was construction everywhere on the route across town, terrible traffic, and then there was the gridlock mess on 16th Street at the drop off site. Part of the issue was that the site was not laid out well, they also probably had a much larger turnout than they expected, and a few of the people directing traffic had no idea what they were doing (the woman directing traffic at the entrance didn’t understand that using the same hand signal for “stop” and “go” was a bit confusing for the drivers).

I left my house around 11am thinking I would get home by 12:30 or 1pm. With traffic, it took me more than a half hour to get across town. Once in line to get into Carter Barron, I clocked my wait at almost a full 2 hours, which I think was better than most people’s wait since I came in via Kennedy Street instead of 16th. I think I finally made it home around 3pm as the cloud cover started really rolling in. I did a little gardening and decided to call it a day and go shoe shopping (love retail therapy!).

Hopefully DC will reevaluate their process in the future and hold these events more than just twice a year!