That was a recurrent scene along the 26.2-mile course, police keeping the peace at gas stations, streets lined not with runners and spectators but with cars stuck in a petrol gridlock.
We are passionate about our faith, eager to serve, would bring energy and enthusiasm to the church, yet we're stuck in a confusing gridlock of whether it would be safe for our own basic wellbeing.
The pilgrim bus was stuck in an almighty gridlock.
Yet our governments are stuck in a 20th-century gridlock, still committed to their great mistake.
With wages stuck in a rut much of the past decade, with thousands of factories shuttered and with Washington gridlocked on issue after issue, it's understandable that many workers would embrace a brash outsider.
But even if it doesn't save time, it is "a lot more practical and enjoyable than spending an hour stuck in rush hour gridlock in a tunnel or on a bridge," Schiller says.
And local television reporters buttonholed smiling politicians, from both the left and the right, who had come together in a rare moment of concord for a nation stuck in parliamentary gridlock and economic crisis.
Congestion has become so bad -- in part because of the economic boom -- that James W. Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, quips, "If your greatest ambition in life is to be stuck in traffic gridlock, this is a great time to be a New Jerseyan".
Ominously, the Chargers' new gridiron stadium has been stuck in bureaucratic gridlock for nearly a decade.
And both parties are feeling the pushback from a public tired of a government stuck in gridlock and worried about an economy that despite improving numbers isn't putting more money into their pockets.
