George W. makes me irrational

I can blame no one but myself for volunteering to drop off food for a UCLA event this evening after work. But I can and do blame our fair president for causing the road closures that made me behave like a complete loon on the drive home. By way of background, here is the traffic warning we received via e-mail:

UPDATE: Closure of Sunset and Sepulveda Boulevards. Transportation Services request notification to campus users that a very important dignitary will be visiting the West LA area. This visit is expected to result in significant traffic congestion throughout the area. Expect considerable delays and plan accordingly.

The distance I needed to cover to get out of Westwood and on my merry way home was no more than a quarter-mile as the crow flies. It took me nearly an hour. Here is a depiction of the rather disastrous journey:

The blue Ws represent the roads shut down for our dignified visitor, and the straight black arrow the route I probably should have taken. Now imagine all of the major arteries in the area (including the straight-shot down Westwood Blvd.) viciously clogged with red tailights going nowhere. At 8 pm, when we all should have been at home with dinner in our bellies.

The absurdly convoluted path (marked in red) was the route that made sense to me at the time, if you factor in things like feeling quite certain that this or that side street will lead you to the promised land, or in any case being unwilling to just sit in a barely-moving line of cars and breathe in the next car's emissions.