For the First Time Ever, I Was Really Late for Work

Ever since I was old enough to have control over my comings and goings, around the Second Grade,  I've been an absolute fanatic, compulsive about being on time, just to be safe--early.  I was always the first to every birthday party, considered "tardy" the worst thing that could be on my report card etc.  Considering that I travel by tremp  and public transportation, that I sometimes have absolutely no control over the timings of my arrivals, it's pretty amazing how seldom I'm more than a couple of minutes late to anything.

When I have late shift at Yafiz, Sha'ar Binyamin, I take a bus over an hour and a half before I'm to start, even though the trip by bus is barely half an hour.  The next bus would make me an hour late.  I used to leave after that earlier bus and try to get there by tremp, but even though I was usually on time, the stress wasn't worth it.  My usual routine is to go shopping in the Rami Levy discount supermarket before signing into work, without any moral problems concerning taking personal time during my work day.  We are allowed breaks, but I'm a fanatic about work ethics.

Well, as you can guess from the title, yesterday held some unexpected events.  Just at the beginning of Wa'adi Charamiya, a few kilometers south of Shiloh where a number of terror attacks had happened and there is no telephone reception, we found ourselves stopped.  There was a major traffic jam.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

I finally made it Sha'ar Binyamin two hours after I should have and signed in to work an hour late.  I couldn't even call them until about fifteen minutes before I finally arrived.  It took over two hours to get past the site of the accident.

PS Luckily I took the front seat for that trip, because I knew that a friend would be sitting with me.  The bus was comfortable and air-conditioned.  And as you see, I had a great view of the road.