Ugh, I'm sorry. I hate being stuck in traffic, not to mention on a holiday weekend. I live in the Houston area. I'm sure traffic is bad in the San Francisco Area too. My husband is from the LA area (Long Beach), and they have God awful traffic there.

Houston at rush hour is bad too, especially if there is an accident or debris in the road. They don't even make much attempt to pick up dangerous debris in the middle of the freeway, like a dropped couch in a middle lane. I once took comedic defensive driving to get out of a traffic ticket I got in a police sting operation after a new law was passed and I hadn't heard of it (must get at least one lane over or slow down 20 or 30 mph under the speed limit while passing the police car with flashing lights, I mean, really? If it's a brand new law, can't they just give out warnings instead of traffic tickets?) Anyway, the driver's ed instructor said he'd driven all over much of the U.S. and has never seen so much unpicked up road debris as in Houston, clothes lost all over the middle of the freeway and just about anything else you can think of, washing machines, refrigerators, big rig flat truck tires not even moved to the side of the road, and sometimes it will be a blind sight if you are coming from an overpass or area where freeways are raised and merge into different exits for different areas. It's horrible. Not only that but the speed & the rudeness of other drivers is awful. I almost always have a panic attack every time I have to drive into Houston proper. Though strangely, there are some places around here like my PCP and pdoc (both spread apart by a 20 minute drive) with Houston addresses that you think of as being in other towns because all the other buildings near them are. Those places I can drive to without guaranteed panic attacks.

You will do just fine.