“What’s up?” my wife asked. Her tone carried a hint of confusion; she was at her office, it was late in the day and we’d be seeing each other shortly.
“I’m just calling to make sure I’m not dead,” I said, peering through the windshield at a melancholy November sunset. “I’ve been stuck in traffic for the last hour and I haven’t moved 15 feet in the last five minutes.”
“No, you’re not dead,” she replied matter-of-factly; she is accustomed to these sorts of calls.
“It should have taken me 35 minutes,” I continued. “And everywhere I go, every street, it’s the same. I thought I could be in limbo. I could have died and not know it and be in limbo. I guess I could still be. You could be a spectre or spectral voice.”
“Well,” I could sense her shifting in her chair. “Gotta go,” she said. “I’ll see you at home.”
Alone once again in my car, the truth of my situation became evident. Every single route I tried was blocked and I’d only made it worse by changing routes.
I’d played Rush Hour Roulette and I’d lost.
In Rush Hour Roulette, a player finds themselves stranded in extreme traffic congestion. After sitting without moving for a seemingly endless period, they “pull the trigger” and perform an extreme driving manoeuvre, hoping to find a quicker alternative route. Sometimes, it works, sometimes, it doesn’t. I didn’t come up with the term, but this is my own definition and I often think of it when stuck in traffic.
On this afternoon, I had been travelling south on Millwood Avenue in Toronto’s east end and had been stuck on the Leaside Bridge for 20 minutes. A lane of the bridge, where the city plans to build safety barriers, was blocked by a few fire trucks and an ambulance. I’d managed to finally “reach land” and found myself facing a parking lot on Donlands Avenue. After another 20 minutes, I “pulled the trigger.” I did a U-turn across the opposite two lanes and headed north on Millwood, hoping to find a better option.
Both Russian Roulette and Rush Hour Roulette share a common element: despair. The term “Russian Roulette” first appeared in 1937 in a short story in Collier’s magazine by writer Georges Surdez. A French legionnaire describes Russian officers playing it in 1917 on the Eastern Front during the First World War, “Sometimes it happened, sometimes not. When it did, there was nothing more to be said or done; when it didn’t, the fellow waited another day.”
While Russian officers in 1917, faced death and disease, drivers who play Rush Hour Roulette face imprisonment in a never-ending traffic jam. My desperate U-turn was a bid to escape. I might find more traffic congestion but at least it would be different congestion. Instead of being stuck in a parking lot heading south, I’d be stuck in a parking lot heading north.
Seconds after I’d “pulled the trigger,” it was clear I’d made an awful error. The traffic was even worse and now I was going in the wrong direction with no alternatives. Toronto is connected by a series of bridges that span the Don Valley. You cannot avoid them. I was now caught in a rush-hour riptide that was dragging me out to sea.
The view out of Andrew Clark's windshield as he sits in his stopped car going west on Southvale Drive in Toronto's Leaside neighbourhood.Andrew Clark/The Globe and Mail
I scanned the radio for any news. Perhaps there had been a fire, flooding or mid-November Bolshevik Revolution. There was no information, just the usual yammering about interest rates, tariffs and the fact it was Tuesday. It was almost 5 p.m. I was going west on Southvale Drive, a residential street, which, thanks to whatever had occurred, now resembled the stand-still Don Valley Parkway. A trip that Google Maps said would take 35 minutes had now taken an hour and 20 minutes and I was no closer to my destination.
In the sky, darkness swept up the day’s last golden embers. The traffic inched every so slightly forward. The houses were dark. Had there been a power outage, I wondered. Or had I unknowingly entered Hades, become a pale insubstantial shade? Was I now in the Asphodel Meadows where the souls of the dead wander listlessly (except that Hades had paved the Asphoral Meadows and I was a pale ashen shade stuck in an endless traffic jam who sits listlessly in my car and chastises my Spotify DJ for playing music I once liked)?
That’s when I placed the phone call.
Ultimately, the trip that should have taken 35 minutes took more than two hours. Like a gambler chasing his losses, I kept playing Rush Hour Roulette, making so many ill-advised U-turns, left turns and taking so many side streets that I ended up in an entirely different part of the city and was able to pick up my wife from her office.
The next day, I learned what had caused the traffic nightmare. The fire trucks on the Leaside Bridge had been there for a good reason. CTV News reported that police had “responded to a call.” Whatever had caused the “call” had apparently begun on the Leaside Bridge and wound up 45 metres below on the Don Valley Parkway. Police had closed all three lanes to investigate.
In an instant, two hours stuck in traffic limbo didn’t seem so bad after all.