It's Just One More Thing to Worry About

And once again I have lovely horrid things to post about my commute out of and into D.C. Oh Joy!

Last night I had to basically drag my commuting partner out of work just to get to the scheduled oil change I had at 6pm on the shore. The car was overdue for one, and since I'll be driving it around a lot in Western/Central MD this weekend it needed done. I was assured we could leave a bit before 5, which would give me about an hour and 10 minutes leeway to arrive on time. We didn't leave until almost a quarter after the work day had ended. This tardiness was definitely not my doing.

We finally get on the road and dealt with the normal D.C. local traffic (which can be a nightmare in itself), arrived on Route 50 and were met with backed up traffic from an accident on 95. I called the place and said I'd be a bit late, no problem. That is until we smacked into a massive amount of traffic because people for some reason don't understand how to properly drive across the Severn River Bridge.

Seriously, I don't know why, but no one understands that you should (unless there are poor weather conditions such as rain, heavy wind, ice, or snow) keep your speed up as you are crossing this bridge. BUT NO ONE DOES! For the life of me I can't figure out why. Maybe because the bridge is built with a pretty drastic curve in the road, and that blocks some visibility thus making people nervous. I have no idea, but it is extremely annoying to me.

So I was about 43 minutes late for my oil change. However, the guys managed to fit me in, which I thought was pretty nice of them.

Commute home, last night

Start Time: 5:13pm

Arrival at shop: 6:43pm

Arrival at home: 8:47pm

Now this morning I hop in the car and yep, smacked with traffic - however it wasn't too bad today. Until I realized that my car was making an odd tinny noise when it accelerated to lower speeds after a complete stop. And the noise wasn't always there when I accelerated.

Of course this doesn't happen until I'm actually over the D.C. line. So I pulled into the parking garage at work and thought "could this be my muffler?" Whelp, after gently tapping it with my foot (I couldn't actually touch the thing, it's hot from the long commute) it seems that for some reason the muffler is loose. And I could replicate the sound, which means if my foot rocking it can make that noise, I'm sure the car bouncing along on the road will as well. Can we say "I think the mechanic hit it during the oil change and the rest of the commute shook it loose?" That's my working theory for now at least. I'm just thankful that it does not seem to be bent or crushed. But I'll have to take a better look at it this weekend. Really, that's the last thing I need to worry about right now.

Start Time: 7:32am (another late morning, I know)

Arrival Time: 9:08am