Going postal

Last night Chelsea and I went to see Little Mom in Plano and take Chel’s Bug, which we’re selling, to a Volkswagen dealership to see what they said it’s worth. We headed back to Oak Cliff around 10:30. There are about a million different ways to get back to our house, but we had the top down on the Bug so I suggested that we exit Sylvan and drive through Kessler Park, by far the most scenic route.

We got through the downtown interchange and hit a huge backup waiting to exit Sylvan. They’ve been doing lots of construction on I-30 lately, so I figured it must be related to that. It was weird, though — the other lanes were moving through just fine.

We waited on the Trinity River bridge for about 30 minutes, moving forward inch by inch toward the Sylvan exit, and then it hit me what was going on. Dallas’ main post office is at the Sylvan exit. Yesterday was the tax deadline. It was almost midnight. We had gotten caught in the traffic jam of last-second tax filers!

When we finally exited, it was like a circus at the post office. They had a huge tent set up and postal workers with big baskets standing along the side of the street to collect returns. The parking lot was jammed, probably with people inside filling out extension forms.

Once we passed the post office, it was smooth sailing once again. Next year on April 15th we’re taking the back way home.