round and round it goes
why did it stop? Nobody knows …
direct that traffic!

Moving from Atlanta to the Hilton Head area, the traffic I deal with is bad but on a different level.

Most often, the traffic problems I deal with are ones of stupidity and little access to roads rather than the overall mass or volume I dealt with for 12 years in Atlanta.

One day last week at lunch something goofy happened.

I take my lunch and go for walk down to the ocean.

The other three people I share an office with go out on the island to find something to eat or run errands.

I was back at desk and alone as they trickled back in, one at a time, each one saying how terrible the traffic was.

This happens often in season or between Memorial Day and Labor Day, but this was odd for April.

It was the middle of a big spring break week but still it was odd.

The traffic continued to build through the afternoon which was odd.

And when end of the working day came and we left to go home, the local streets were still at a standstill.

That there was a problem was already being acknowledged by local police and the local paper.

Terrible traffic.

But no one seemed to know why.

It was as if everyone with a couple of hundred miles had decided to spend the day on Hilton Head Island and no one wanted to leave.

Not far from where I work, the two main roads, the only main roads on the Island, intersect.

You might think that this intersection would have a stoplight or a 4 way stop or something in the way of traffic management and it does.

It has the latest and greatest scheme in traffic to handle traffic.

It has a traffic circle.

A traffic circle that requires cooperation of all the drivers who are in, entering and leaving the circle.

Maybe it was a sign of the times, but the traffic circle traffic had collapsed.

Nobody understands or says they understand what happened except that traffic was backed up for miles on all four roads that shared the circle.

Something needed to be done.

And the local Sheriff did it.

The traffic in the traffic circle was rescued by Deputy Sheriff’s directing traffic.

A method of traffic control that is older than the gas powered automobile.

It took four Deputy’s, one at each entrance to the circle.

Traffic was held up at three of the entry points while traffic was opened for 2 minutes or so for just one entry road.

The coordination took some time but it was the best, if not the only, solution.

Is there meaning behind this random event?

I think so.

Either traffic circles don’t work, which I agree with.

Or drivers in this self centered era, can not cooperate to make it work, which I something I can agree with.

Or, it is just one more sign of the coming apocalypse.

That may be the best reason in explaining what happened to make traffic so bad last Thursday.

sunrise appointment
all morning commuting not
created equal

Been driving to work for over 40 years.

Never got to like it.

Still don’t.

But …

Back in 2009, we got relocated to Atlanta, Georgia and I drove from the upper north side of Gwinnett to midtown ATL 5 days a week for 12 years.

Was it bad?

I will tell you that one Sunday the Pastor started his sermon with “… Maybe you have an awful job. Maybe you are dealing with a bad financial situation. Maybe you have health issues … Maybe you start your day driving on I85.“

45 minutes to 1 and half hours EACH way on average until I started to leave for work at 6AM, then the trip in took 34 minutes but the return trip started at 5pm with all the folks who just wanted to get home.

It was long.

It was scary.

Each day had the chance to end up in a chaos or death.

But I lived near the freeway and I worked near the freeway.

It was a left turn onto the free way out in Gwinnett and a left off the freeway in midtown so overall it was not TOO demanding.

There was really just one way to go and for good or bad, you got on the road and made due.

Not like when I lived on the north end of Grand Rapids, Michigan and worked on the south end out near the airport.

With that commute I had lots of ways to get there and back.

Lots of ways and all of them bad.

Some with freeways, some with back alleys.

Take I96 to Patterson.

Take Fuller to Michigan to East Paris.

Take Fuller to Lake Drive and the Beltline.

I can remember them all.

All of them with left turns, right turns and intersections with stoplights and all of them leaving you wishing you had taken another route.

Exasperating to say the least and not much to say on the side of what might be any redeeming factor.

The winter weather that came with living in Michigan was the frosting on that commuting cake.

Today I live just miles from the Atlantic coast.

My office is within walking distant of the beach.

My home is about 10 miles away.

I leave early in the morning.

With the changes of seasons and the time change, 4 times a year I drive into the crack of dawn..

I like to think that I have an appointment with the sunrise.

I am still surrounded by some of the dumbest drivers on God’s green earth.

Add in the demands each driver faces when they are tasked with operating a moving piece of machinery while trying to manage their lives via call phone and there is a level of exasperation that isn’t going away.

Years ago I signed up from traffic alerts for my commute in ATL.

I still get them.

In the last 24 hours I have received alerts that:

Accident. Left shoulder blocked – I 85 South at GA-140/J Carter Blvd/Exit 99 …

8 mph on 85 South @ Jimmy Carter Blvd (just before) …

20 mph on 85 North @ Old Peachtree Rd NW …

Accident reported – I 85 North at GA-317/Exit 111 …

This morning, the sun was still dripping water after sliding up and out of the Atlantic Ocean.

Not all commutes are created equal.

no matter how good
you feel, the morning won’t be
as it is right now

I know how you feel.

If I were walking, I’d be a foot off the ground.

It’s like just falling in love — you want the sensations to last forever.

You don’t want to go to sleep because you know that no matter how good you feel, in the morning it won’t be as good as it is right now.

W. P. Kinsella in the book, Shoeless Joe.

Going back to my roots, I have started listening to books on tape, welllll, audio books on my drive to work.

It is a shame really.

I live in a coastal paradise.

The drive through palm trees and across the intercoastal waterway as the sun rises out of the Atlantic Ocean should be enough of a daily treat that I would never tire of seeing it.

To be sure, I greet the visual aspect of my twice a week commute with pleasure that far outweighs any that I might have felt driving into the city of Atlanta.

It is my co-drivers.

The people I share my experience with.

The people who I would gladly banish to far off Mongolia if I could.

Bill Bryson once wrote something along the lines that God planned for Mr. Bryson to spend part of his day with the dumbest people in the world and that God arranged that by bringing the dumbest people in the world in their cars to drive along with Mr. Bryson to work.

I know what he means.

The frustration of yelling at drivers who marvel at things like a traffic light changing.

These people find this so marvelous, they sit and watch it for several cycles.

I need to escape and I use audio books to take me away from these people.

I can lose myself in the story and find myself at work or at home and much angst-less than without the audio book.

I also happened to be gifted three Audible credits for Father’s Day and because of this, I discovered Audibles free list.

I returned to audio books with an old favorite, Shoeless Joe.

I love the book and the choice of words in the writing but I also like the reader, Grover Gardner and I have searched out his books as he reads with a voice I hear in my head when I read.

Anyway, listening to Shoeless Joe, the writing in Shoeless Joe has been much on mind

W.P. Kinsella can turn a phrase with the best of them.

Mr. Hemingway wrote that to write about an experience is such a way that the experience became part of the collective consciousness of the reader was what it took to be a writer.

Mr. Kinsella writes about common things in our collective consciousness in a way that makes me stop and say to myself, Yup, that’s it.

Mr. Kinsella even starts this passage with know how you feel.

And he does.

If I were walking, I’d be a foot off the ground. It’s like just falling in love — you want the sensations to last forever. You don’t want to go to sleep because you know that no matter how good you feel, in the morning it won’t be as good as it is right now.

Romance.

Being in love.

Being happy to see someone.

You want the sensations to last forever.

You don’t want to go to sleep because you know that no matter how good you feel, in the morning it won’t be as good as it is right now.

But the feeling doesn’t last forever.

In the morning it won’t be a good as it is right now.

Love stories start with romance.

The romance or maybe the romantic feelings don’t last by the love story can go on.

Romance is a hybrid world.

A land maybe of make believe.

The land where, for a while, dreams can come true.

A land where feelings can’t be sustained.

Because in the morning it won’t be a good as it is right now.

I am remined of Orson Welles in the Third Man with this famous speech.

You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

driving in the dark
no slow down through the circles
all the lights are green

Sure I drove in Atlanta traffic on a daily basis for years.

I learned to cope.

I did not learn to like it.

I didn’t like traffic then.

I don’t like traffic now.

On the grand scheme, there is not a lot of traffic where I live and work now but there are some odd factors that impact traffic.

One thing is the only one way to work and that way is a bridge.

A four lane – two lanes in either direction – soon to be condemned bridge.

Not that Atlanta had any alternate routes that worked either but they did have lots of lanes.

Another thing is that anyone who needs to be at work in the area where I work, has to be at work at the same time.

Everyone using the same bridge at the same time creates traffic.

Frustrating traffic.

To add to the frustration, there are two traffic circles on my route to work.

So I have been leaving earlier.

Then the time changed.

And leaving early put me in the dark.

But it was okay.

I was the only car in the traffic circle.

When you are the only car and the idea is to slow down and yield to traffic on your left, there was no slow down as there was no traffic.

There are a handful of traffic lights between me and work and most of them are placed by some deviltry to do nothing but annoy me.

But it was okay as all those light were green.

I am not so foolish as to think I have found the trick.

I am not so foolish as to think this could happen again tomorrow.

I am happy for just today and for today, that is enough.

Hope for tomorrow, but for today …

driving in the dark
no slow down through the circles
all the lights are green