The Cayman Compass led off with a story this morning titled "Traffic Chaos Plagues Tourists". I'd like to think that traffic chaos plagues everyone on this island, whether they're here for the day, the week or if they live here. They did manage to narrow the focus of the story down later on, though.

The article described the mass chaos that occured last Saturday. The day before Easter Sunday and the day after Good Friday, and smack in the middle of a four-day weekend that traditionally is a time that people camp out on the beach with family, and run back and forth visiting, catching up and that sort of yadda yadda. Easter weekend is also the end of high season (April 15th) and is the second busiest holiday of the year,tourism-wise next to Christmas.

Bearing all of this in mind, someone's head had to have rolled (but probably not) at Public Works for OK'ing a request to CLOSE THE BYPASS behind the Galleria shopping center to allow some trenching and laying of pipes and cables to a new construction development. This forced ALL of the traffic coming from Seven Mile Beach and West Bay to stay on the single-lane, full-of-driveways, stoplight'ed West Bay Road. Those of you that have been reading this for awhile and remember some of my frothing-at-the-mouth tirades about traffic on any given day can appreciate the frustration that must have occured from waiting in excess of two hours in traffic, during the heat of the day.

Fortunately, I was on my scooter. :)

Saturday morning I headed up to Sharon's place for an easter brunch. Jules was there with the Bean and her mum, and after we finished eating and sitting around talking, poor Jules decided to call it a day, as the Bean had kept her up for the previous two nights and was looking forward to actually taking a nap while the baby was asleep during the afternoon. They left at about 2:30. At 2:45 she called us to warn us off trying to come in to town, as they had only made it as far as Victoria House, north of the Yacht Club and were sitting STOPPED in traffic. We contemplated getting the Scooter Brigade to convoy down there and rescue them, but I don't think Jules or Matty would have been too happy to slip Bean into a snugli and hop onto a two-wheeler, and Jules' mum is getting on and has a few mobility challenges as well.

I left at about 3:00 and rode home up the middle of the road past all the traffic and caught up to Jules near the COurtyard Marriot by Public Beach: they had moved about a quarter of a mile in the last 20 or so minutes. I carried on, went all the way down to the roundabout by the Lone Star to see what was causing all the traffic, and saw that there was a barricade set up barring the access to the bypass. I assumed there was a nasty accident or something, but I didn't find out that it was just closed til Monday. I turned around and headed back north towards home and pulled in at the Big Daddy's liquor store at The Falls shopping center, which just so happens to be across the street from my apt (convenient, isn't it?) and grabbed a few bottles of cold water. After that I walked over to Legendz and Jay gave me a styrofoam to-go container full of ice and I balanced it all on my scooter and headed north again.

By this time, Jules had progressed to the south end of Public Beach, so I turned around and pulled up next to her. They thought it was funny to see me again, until I showed them the goods. I took the chilled bottles of water out of the bag and handed them in through the driver's side window, and then the container of ice and saw the manic smiles on their faces. Did I mention that she doesn't have air conditioning in her old bucket?

Eventually they got home and cleaned up, but I don't think they ventured out again for the rest of the weekend.

It's times like this that make me glad I took the plunge and bought myself a Vespa Scooter to get around Grand Cayman and it's awful, hideous, insiduous traffic.