Category: Traffic Jams

Withering Heights

Posted on by chappyshi

It was in the high 70’s today in Northern Virginia…March 13.  Give me a break.  If these temperatures continue into the summer we are in for a scorcher.  I for one am not looking forward to it.  I just got home at 2230 and it is 80 in my apartment.  I have only had the heat on for two days out of the whole winter.  I should have my AC on!

Speaking of getting home from work….  It was another day at the mercy of the customer who is heedless of the support staff’s personal obligations and lifestyle.   Accordingly, my day went from a predictable 8 hours to 11.5.  I just love leaving the office at  2130 w/o having had dinner or a significant break all day.  I guess that is the price I pay for having a job in a society where the top 1% beats the rest of us into the ground and tells us we should be happy.

To cap it off, we fight hideous traffic in our commute.  If you try to work a bit of flex time, you have to fight the highway construction in the area.  Flex time in this area means leaving for work no earlier than 0900 and going home before 2230 or after 1930.  But no matter how many lanes the state adds to the highway, there is always some bottleneck that makes all the expansion basically worthless.

To make things even worse,  most of the highway work around here is for new toll roads along side the normal  byways.  As such, the 1% can pay their way away from the madding crowd and theoretically avoid the traffic jams.  Meanwhile Juan, the landscape engineer and his household maintenance technician wife. Juanita, along with the rest of us can fight the traffic jams.

Well, it is after 2300  and time  for me to finish my after work beer and get some dinner!  Midnight snacks were never this good!

Drive Me Snow Blind Crazy

Posted on by chappyshi

Pulling in to my apartment complex tonight I got blocked by a van in front of me.  The driver got the front wheels over the first speed bump but seemed to have a problem getting the back wheels over it.  Now take into consideration that we had a wintery mix going for about 30 minutes w/ an accumulation of perhaps 0.2  inches.  It was a moderately sized speed bump so of course I wasn’t surprised that the dumb ass had to stop before he tried to take his rear wheels over that Mont Blanc of an obstacle.

I figured he was going to get out and put on the snow chains but he was wise to that realizing that putting them on the rear tires of a front wheel drive van would have been pointless.  Accordingly, he put his vehicle in reverse probably figuring to return back over the speed bump, put the chains on his front tires, and then motor his way over the speed bump using his  chained front tires to pull both front and rear wheels over it like Hannibal crossing the Alps.

Dumb ass…I passed on the left and pulled into my parking  spot.  I was a bit breathless from the high altitude when I got out of my car and had to wade soul deep through the “wintery mix” to get to my lofty, snow graced apartment but after a strenuous 30 seconds was able to successfully make my way to warmth and safety.  Thankfully, I did not get stranded in a “wintery mix”  drift and have to chew my arm off and drink my urine to survive.

Wasn’t there a movie?

Trying to Get Air…and I Am Not Skiing

Posted on by chappyshi

Looking at my left front tire after coming out of the grocery store today, I thought it was looking pretty low on air.  I figured I had better get some air in it before I went home.   I stopped at this one place I go to where you dial up the tire pressure on the pump, add air to your tire, and it beeps when your desired pressure has been reached.

There were two idiots in front of me trying to get air.  The first car took one kid with pants falling off his ass and an aging dude in white hair six minutes to fill up one tire on a Subaru wagon.  Considering it was a Subaru and all that I am glad they didn’t use a person powered bike pump to fill up the tire.   Good for the environment and all that…

The next airhead was in a van, skinny and older, wearing odd shoes and pants rolled up at the ankles.  He seemed to have some issues bending down to remove the caps from the tire valve.   He only did the left front and right rear tires for some odd reason and used a tire pressure gauge, despite the pressure reading functionality built into the pump, for the front tire but not the rear.  It took him about five minutes to accomplish this.

When it was at last my turn to get air, I topped off all four of my tires in less than two minutes.  Thankfully, the tire that I thought was inordinately low, was only down a pound or so.    In the meantime, two cars had backed up behind me.  I have never seen lines to get air except at ski areas.  Bottom line though, how hard is it to put air in your tires?

Pictures from Vacation in Salvo, NC, on the Outer Banks

Posted on by chappyshi

It took me longer than I had wished to get all these pictures together.  The downside of digital photography is that we can take too many pictures and look at them before printing or publishing them with minimal  monetary impact.  Nonetheless, I spent the time and put together a set of pictures from our recent trip to the Outer Banks.  Many thanks to my sister who made the arrangements and paid for the place!

Check out the pictures here on my photo album or browse to my photo album from the main page of my blog and look for the Salvo vacation pictures.  The only real downer of the vacation,  other than a couple of trips  to Urgent Care centers, was the traffic.  For one four hour stretch, we averaged 19 MPH!

Scary, Inconsiderate Drivers

Posted on by chappyshi

The other day while I was getting ready to take a left turn on a green light (not the green arrow), the fool who was across from me waiting to do the same thing, decided to go straight and cut right in front of me just when I was getting ready to make my turn.  The next day, while waiting in the left lane of two left turn lanes (green arrow only), the guy in the right hand left turn lane decided to take his left hand turn (on red) just as the opposing traffic was starting across the intersection.  WTF eh?

VDOT Traffic Engineers Appear to Be Stupid

Posted on by chappyshi

In the nearly five years I have been living and/or commuting in Virginia, I have written about the horrors of Route 28 which transits north/south from Route 7 in Sterling to Route 17 near Bealton.  The drivers seem to be insane; changing lanes at the last minute to exit, changing lanes for no reason at all, driving slowly in the fast lane, etc.

Over the years, VDOT (Virginia Department of Transportation for those of you aren’t from the area) has done much to alleviate the congestion on this road most of which has involved overpasses and a fairly ingenious stoplight/traffic pattern at Braddock Road near Route 66.  I will not speak for the nightmare of 28 South of Centreville because I don’t have to use it daily.  If I did,  I’d have killed myself and not written this rant.

Today, while having a beer at the aforementioned Applebees, which I never need to go to again, I heard that one of the three last major overpasses on Route 28 had been completed.  One of them was finished up a few weeks ago.  It was the last light prior to reaching Route 7 heading north…at Nokes Boulevard, which provides access to the Dulles Town Center Mall.  There were two lights prior to that, one of which, Severn Way,  provided access to my last employer.  That light is now gone and the road is blocked.  Now those who wish access to entities on Severn Way have to go round robin to get to the plant from Route 28.

The other light in that area seem superfluous but provides access/egress to a parking lot on the Washington and Old Dominion trail.  We’ll see how long that light lasts…

The ugliness truly still exists at rush hour traveling south on Route 28 to Route 66 which is a major east/west artery in the western D.C. suburbs.  Route 28 was already backing up from the Route 66 ramps to where the new overpass was just completed at Willard Road.  Now, without the stoplight, all traffic is free to cruise under the overpass and back things up even further from Route 66, probably to Route 50  and points north.

This was all predicted by yours truly and others familiar with the commute.  If you take out a bunch of stoplights that, albeit annoying, meter the  traffic on the route, it is all going to get jammed up even worse at the next choke point(s).  In this case, the choke points are: a worthless traffic light giving access to a recreational field (Ellanor C. Lawrence Park)  for northbound traffic and a required light giving access to Braddock Road for northbound traffic.

And so to get to the point, I wasn’t even on Route 28 and I was afflicted.  Coming out of the shopping area I was in, I tried to take a left onto Westfields Boulevard which crosses route 28 between the newly opened overpass  and the Route 66.  Traffic was backed up on my side for people trying to merge on to 28 south.  Traffic was backed up across from me for people trying to merge on to Westfields Boulevard east to get to 28 south.  Traffic was backed up on Westfields Boulevard heading SW for people trying to get to Route 29 South on a shortcut to bypass the backup on 28 south to Routes 28 and 66.  Can you say goat rope?