A Wrong Turn

Yesterday on the way to work the wonderful little light came on the dash board informing me that I needed gas. The night before I saw that I was done to almost a ¼ tank and thought about filling up but was tired and thought I had enough for one more round trip. Last night as I was leaving the parking lot to head home I realized I wouldn’t make it home and really didn’t want to run out of gas. As I was sitting on 520 waiting the needle on the gas gauge kept getting lower and lower so I figured I better pull off in Redmond and get some before I ran out. Only problem with that is that I really don’t know my way around there and didn’t know where a gas station was.

So I’m get off of 520 and start looking for a gas station. I finally spot one on the other side of the road in the opposite direction. I see an opening in the centerline barrier and take a left turn into that opening. Now remember this is rush hour traffic, it is getting dark, it is raining and I don’t really know where I am. As I pull into this opening I see a small truck trying to turn into where I am, I look down and realize that the turn arrows in the road are pointing at me not away from me. Yep, I was heading the wrong way on a one-way turn.

How often do we do that, take a turn in our hustle and bustle, distracted by all the things that are in our lives; kids, friends, work, spouses, as we take a wrong turn missing all the signs and warnings. We end up in a spot we really don’t want to be, in danger from a head on collision and just flat out at risk.

I quickly merge into traffic and out of the way of that poor guy in the truck trying to make a turn. I get to the gas station and thankfully no police car is behind me. I fill up the tank, which by the way took 15.6 gallons into a 16 gal tank.

This time I did get away with going the wrong way on a one-way street, but I also had a price to pay. If I had gotten gas the night before I would have saved myself the anxiety of looking for a station, never would have been in that situation and would have only paid 3.05/gal instead I paid 3.19/gal.