Zero to Forty in a While

The whole complaining about the price of gas is old, so don't look here as I discuss automobile-related fare. Just don't. Go away. Read perezhilton.com or whatever else is on your Mozilla toolbar IF YOU ARE EVEN AWARE OF WHAT THAT IS, GOD! REALLY.

I have noticed that lately I have been doing some driving. Most of it is personal, to be truthful. That jaunt out to Tropical Smoothie a few days ago ain't exactly on the company dime. Nevertheless, I have been logging the miles hither and thither.

I have not experienced a truly egregious incident of road rage since August of 2004 while attempting to drive faster than a hurricane, but driving is a most infuriating of necessary life activities, at least in this neck of America. Understand that this is not a soapbox for any particular political agenda, but damn if the roads in seven I-can't-believe-there's-still-road-construction-going-on-here-after-five-years seven aren't an unholy gridlocked labyrinth to the point of making a person bleed out of the anus and ears in sheer agony. I should know because I have lived the nightmare in several movements, and at this point it's hard to decide which example to embellish. It's like having to play Whac-a-Mole with stillborn children. So much suffering is involved yet you want to get that high score.

Tackling Hampton Roads road construction here is best done in an all-encompassing way without accusing any sort of transit authority of taking away my tax dollars and giving them to dangerous minorities. Simply, there is a lot of road construction going on around these parts. Why? Well, I would point the finger at city fathers so eager to rape and pillage the land for tax revenues that they let developers run wild and build a metropolis of two-story vinyl pup-tents on a few swatches of farm land, but that's neither here nor there. So now we gots lots of cars and people and ain't got much roads to put them on to git to places or somethin'. Yes, Virginia, we have traffic. All road construction here seems like once, ages ago, we lived in a prosperous community with a Department of Transportation eager to accommodate the growth of the surrounding cities. Then Deep Impact, Armageddon, or Little Black Book happened and everything was wiped out, leaving a bunch of wretched roadways for oversized gas-guzzlers to traverse with trepidation. I'm not kidding. There are a ton of roads under construction, but no one doing any constructing. Really constructive.

So that's an eye-gouging experience, to be truthful. But amidst war zones of unreasonably slow speed limits, awkwardly placed road cones standing sentry along highway that seems perfectly fine, and construction workers doing absolutely nothing but growing facial hair, there are worse things. Yes, follow your nose...

While road construction might be the third-worst thing out there in the Seven Cities, the second worst thing are the cities themselves. We possess a culture that has, over time, perpetuated what can be described as nothing short of a woefully retarded practice of poorly estimating time and distance between two points within the area code.

Chesapeake to the Oceanfront? Psshaw, that's a quick 20 minutes.

Maybe at 3AM in a Dodge Viper, douchebag. Everything is "a quick 20 minutes." Even Williamsburg to Portsmouth has been topped out at a "reasonable 45 minutes." A tradition of lies if you ask me. Nothing is as close as it seems. Why do we do this to ourselves, crippling each other with optimism? Road construction has exsanguinated the highways and byways to the point of lifelessness and the overabundance of traffic lights has left us with a mutated version of the children's game "Red Light, Green Light," only this time, we're playing for our lives. And inside deadly hunks of giant metal.

This brings me to a concept that I first discovered in Virginia Beach but eventually found it elsewhere in the United States, that of "DON'T BLOCK THE BOX OR WE WILL LOCK YOU IN THE STOCKS!" This is not entirely true, but the Virginia Beach police are decidedly vociferous when it comes to the enforcement of keeping intersections clear for the purposes of a smooth flow of traffic. The fine levied upon the disobedient is admittedly steep, but these days, $500 can't even buy you a next-generation gaming console. Sest lah veeyay, I think is how the French say it. In any case, if you catch yourself in such a debacle where you are "blocking the box" everything turns into a race against the clock to prevent cataclysm, or worse, getting pulled over beside a mini golf course. Here is how things go down...

You're minding your own business, trying not to stare at the pack of boisterous (insert choice of stereotype here), waiting for cars ahead of you to lurch through the waxing and waning green light at the Oceanfront. As time slips through your hands, you notice a buildup by the intersection that shows no signs of dissipating. A most malicious of bottlenecks is beginning to form. Soon, it's too late. Time stands still, and you catch yourself in the box.

The light's still green though. You've got time.

Really.

Don't worry.

You do.

Don't you?

Frantically, you start jerking your head around to view the status of the rest of the lights at the intersection, praying for a reprieve, that the lights don't change colors on you and leave you high and dry. A funny image considering you're at the Oceanfront. HAW!

The cars ahead of you aren't helping a brother out. Every inch forward seems to take eons, as if they envision themselves as a collective Atlas, with the weight of the world on their shoulders. The bright green hue of the stoplight seems to be fading with the setting sun, and the red light at the intersecting street appears poised to drop through like the penultimate Connect Four piece, like you've beaten your ten-year-old cousin for the ninth time in a row at Thanksgiving and are really looking forward to complete victory, not unlike what John Travolta was aiming for in Battlefield Earth. Don't see Battlefield Earth.

You can see each grain of sand fall from the hourglass, as if you have achieved total enlightenment, yet realize that you will never enjoy it if you owe the city of Virginia Beach $500 and can't savor your epiphany over a good sandwich or something.

The light in front of you turns yellow.

Now you are gritting your teeth into dust and your knuckles are a most spectral white. You scream cuss words.

Then, slowly, on cue from TLC, the cars creep, yeah and keep it on the down low.

Said nobody is supposed to know.

So they creep, yeah.

They clear the box. You apply as much gas as time and space will allow and fling your vehicle into the other side of the intersection as the light starts to bleed red. It behaves not unlike the haunted carriage from Beauty and the Beast.

True, the perpetual state of road construction and the lies we acquiesce to about time and space are frustrating enough, but what is without a shadow of a doubt the most nefarious menace on the Tidewater (old school) roads are the other drivers that have held the DMV up with staplers demanding to become licensed drivers. If this is not true, then I am a liar. Even if I am a liar, then it is easier to get a driver's license in Virginia than it is to learn what colors you get when you mix the primary ones together. This can't be made up. It is seriously unfathomable how some people are allowed to get driver's licenses.

I've heard the sayings all before. "It takes all kinds." "Variety is the spice of life." Sure, fine, sunshine and puppies. However, there is absolutely no excuse for stupidity or poor taste, which ultimately translates into an ignorance for the well-being of others on the road. And no, I'm actually not referring to magnetic ribbons or the purloined cartoon of Calvin urinating on everything.

This is easily the best example I can think of in recent memory. The other day I found myself on an off ramp attempting to merge onto Interstate 664 southbound; this involved an off ramp with an acceleration lane that eventually disappears. Now, I have a slow car. A 1999 Toyota Corolla is probably the slowest car on the road besides a 1998 Toyota Corolla with four fat men inside of it.

So I'm trying to make it from my house to Bed Bath and Beyond and back in less than an hour. The time is 3:06PM. It takes 30 minutes to get to Bed Bath and Beyond from my house on a near-perfect day. I am trying easing off the off ramp and actually obeying the yield sign, which most drivers here ignore with a "WHUT'S THAT I CAIN'T THINK 'BOUT READIN' CAUSE THIS KENNY CHESNEY SONG IS ON THE RADIO!!" Unfortunately, such ghastly lack of foresight has caused the right lane to back up from people forgetting to obey the rules of the road, so countless magnetic ribbons, Calvin pissing clings, Bush/Cheney '04 stickers, and vans pockmarked with mailbox decals about Saunders Motorsports and their top dirt bikers Cody #45, Jimmy #9, and Wayne #22 are now sitting at a stop that would make a dead man lose his patience.

The left lane is quite open. So I make a move. And that's when I realized I was going to die.

For one reason or another, my car has no gauge to indicate my RPMs. I understand that such a gauge is largely superfluous in a car with an automatic transmission that is not intended to go faster than quick chickens, but on this occasion it might have been useful. I have changed lanes into the left lane when suddenly the Hound of the Baskervilles in the form of a Ford Explorer is rocketing my way at what felt like Mach 3. I put my pedal to the floor and hear that 750cc engine wheeze for its life. 35...40...42...43...and this car is still baring down on me with a vengeance. Finally, the Corolla rockets forward after an unprecedented 120 seconds of acceleration to reach 61 miles-per-hour...and then I have to come to a dead stop. Why? My fellow motorists saw a special need to inspect the quality of work the convicts were doing at picking up trash and mowing the median on the highway.

When it comes down to it, I can't imagine what the DMV is thinking. I wonder if they're in cahoots with the Virginia Department of Transportation to make everything a living hell for anyone who has actual things to do and isn't driving on the road for fun to check out the hottest rims or truck lifts running the streets. I've seen people in this area read novels while driving, physically fight, drink liquor, sleep, and pick vicious boogers. There is literally a void of accountability on the roadways as people don't accelerate when the light turns green, but they slow down as if I'm trapped in the Bizarro World. Merging, a simple concept, has been transformed into rocket science for most. Speed limits are regarded as a dangerous precipice where no one dares to tread.

"Forty-five through here!? Are you insane? It's much safer to maintain twenty-five."

Welcome to paradise.

Oh, and I made it back from Bed Bath and Beyond at 3:58.