So, today I was driving home from running somewhere for work and got stuck on the Interstate. Traffic came to a complete standstill for about an hour. For a while everyone just sort of sat in their cars. It was unclear originally what had happened, and I could not see why traffic wasn't moving.
A cop eventually walked down the highway for a bit and I believe I overheard him mention it was a three car pile up up ahead, and they were trying to clear the wreck. He wasn't sure how long it'd take for the road to clear.
Around the time the cop started walking down the road, people had begun to get out of their cars. It had been about 30 ish or so minutes at this point of not moving. People were stretching, taking photos of the beautiful scenery (Vermont in the Fall is wonderful) at first. But then as time went on, more people began coming out of their cars, and just sort of hanging out with each other. This was my view while I was waiting:
I quickly found out the car directly in front of me was a group of college girls going somewhere, and the car diagonally in front of me was full of a bunch of college guys also going somewhere. The guys got out and started tossing around a tennis ball, the girls got out and sort of hung out on the side of the road. One of them pulled out a chair and just sort of chilled for a bit.
On my end, I was thinking about the supplies I had in my car. I had some camping chairs, I had just picked up a pizza, had water in the car, first aid, a frisbee. It was a nice cool day. So in my head I was thinking "whelp, not a bad day to get stuck on the interstate for multiple hours". I was also thinking about getting out and trying to socialize, but fear sort of overcame me there. I'm not sure how I (a 27 year old) would try to hang out with the college kids. Also, it wouldn't have been a great idea to throw a frisbee around that many parked cars.
It's one of these sort of random moments I haven't had in a while. Not since college really. The sort of situation where you're just stuck somewhere with a bunch of people, so might as well try to socialize. And idk, I thought it was kind of a nice thought? The idea of a bunch of people getting stuck on the interstate, hanging out for an afternoon/ evening because what else are you going to do.
Fortunately, the traffic cleared and we were only stopped for about an hour total. Part of me was a bit disappointed because it would've been a sort of cool story one day - getting stuck and just hanging out with strangers for a while. It was also cool to see people just be people - getting out, walking about the cars. Also wild to do that on an interstate, something idk how many people would really experience. It was almost surreal in that way
Anyways, it's been on my mind today so I wanted to share