I orchestrate to minimize the chaos of the morning lunch prep and pack/kids clean and dressed/breakfast inputted/projects and supplies in backpacks and Aaron braves the traffic to take the kids to school on his way to work.  A fair division of labour that saves me from the insanity of the roads for a few hours until pick-up time!  He has been really great about texting me to let me know they have arrived. I usually receive his text just as I’m finally preparing that first wonderful “cuppa joe”. Last Wednesday his text was a little stranger than usual…(I’ve become accustomed to wading through the mess of autocorrect that I’m subjected to daily through his rushed communications.  🙂

(The cupcakes were for a friend who was leaving that day… sometimes tough for the kids to make new friends only to have them move away… Although Caleigh has recognized it is an easy way to be rid of certain boys who give her a headache!!  She is not terribly enamoured by boys at this point!! Lol  🙂

So I dial his number to talk and figure out what is going on. Turns out he didn’t get too far after dropping the kids at school before traffic completely stopped, just before the toll booth at the entrance to the highway… Time check: 8:00 a.m. We chat for quite a while longer as he relays what is happening, play-by-play. He is texting with a couple of other colleagues caught at various spots along the route, all wondering how long this can last, if they will make it to work, or should they just try to turn around and go back home? For Aaron that was an impossibility, as he was boxed in at what actually was a protest by the teacher’s union, as the Waze comment had suggested… a few hundred protesters and the many buses they arrived on were blocking the highway both ways. From where Aaron and a few thousand other morning commuters were now “parked” he could see a few hundred riot police arrive in police buses and pour out, donning helmets and bullet proof vests and those big, almost full-body length clear shields we’ve honestly only ever seen in media reports of conflict in other countries… and here was Aaron literally meters from one of those very conflicts.  He said it was a little unsettling… (you think?!?!) We have been strictly told to avoid these protests and there is even an alert system that we subscribe to that warns of protests and location to ensure we take a different route. This one seems to have surprised even the “authorities”, as the alert didn’t come out til nearly 10:30 that morning… a little late.

Aaron was a bit nervous.  He locked his doors and kept the windows up.  What if it escalated and the police decided to use tear gas?  It seemed pretty peaceful so far, but he could hear the protestors yelling a chant he couldn’t make out.  From some basic reading of on-line news media I was able to glean that teachers all over the country are concerned about upcoming reforms to education that in a nutshell may decrease the “powers” of the unions.  I read about a protest a month earlier in another city that became violent with tear gas dropped on them from helicopters… really should have read that after he was home and safe…

For a long time the police were gathered on both sides of the highway, then they started to move… something in the situation was changing!  Aaron was silent on the phone as he watched them move, then realized they were just moving out of the direct sun onto the shady side!  Whew!  Was pretty uneventful thankfully… just a lot of waiting.  I was surprised by how enterprising people can be here, when he reported that the people pouring out of their cars not long after stopping were walking around coming back with food and coffee… really?? Right there on the highway, there appeared the street vendors (from where I don’t know… that part of the highway is in a valley, with very steep, tall banks of hills on either side…) to offer refreshment and make some money (talk about a (literally) captive market!!) Amazing!!

Aaron is anxious to turn around and get the heck out of there, but all on/off ramps are blocked and the shoulder is filled with more and more police arriving, driving up the wrong way!  I can hear the sirens wailing in the background, intermittently for about a half hour… There are media and police helicopters circling overhead (I can hear those too!) and media folks arriving on motorbikes.  Every so often Aaron reports seeing 20 or so cars on the adjacent ramp being allowed through… he’s not sure why or from where, but it gives him a bit of hope that he may be moving … soon… ?   We hang up and he and his fellow stuck colleagues start conference calling from their cars to try to salvage some of this work day, not knowing how long they will be sitting there… About three hours later the toll operators together with police allow a small number of cars through the toll on his side… he’s at the front of the line so gets through… but now, does it make sense to go the 25 kms more to work or to search for a way to turn around and just go home?… We have a function at the school that night, and he doesn’t want to miss it, and isn’t sure how long they will be blocking the highway for… So as soon as he can, he gets off the highway and tries to get his Waze Lady to help him wind his way home, avoiding all highway routes.  Not long after my phone rings. “Hello?”  “Hi, I think I’m at a dead end.  There is a dog sitting in the middle of the dirt road looking at me… Everyone has stopped and is looking at me…”  I crack up and wonder how that happened… “Fire your Waze Lady” I quip… Up go his windows, down go his locks and he backs up and waits for her to “recalculate” his route… “I wondered why I was the only one (of the many who where looking for an alternative route home!) who turned down this road… !”  Maybe swim with the masses just this once, I suggest… It takes him an hour to drive what should take 20 mins or so, and upon his arrival at home he grumbles that he just went for a 5 hour drive to nowhere… (He left the house at 7 and got back just after noon…) He does a bit more work from home and we head to the school together to get the kids.

Early on we were warned to never let the gas tank get below half full here, and now we know why!