Saturday, March 05, 2005

6:30PM Saturday March 5, 2005

Update on my Texas commentary:
Boy I hate to admit it but I've met my match. There has never been a map I couldn't read, understand and use to navigate any driver ... until now. That changed when we tried to go "exploring" after we ate lunch today and in less than a half hour, if not for Phil's extremely good sense of direction, we would have been totally lost. We've already noticed that the whole state of Texas is what we're calling "signage challenged" and exacerbating that problem, Austin and the surrounding counties have the most tangled web of roads I've ever seen. Every town we've seen, big or small has a veritable explosion of roads going in and coming out but Austin is the most confusing to date: county roads (CR), ranch to market roads (RM), farm to market roads (FM), state highways, state loops or spur roads, park roads, alternate (US) routes, business (US) routes and of course, interstate highways. If the road is on the map, the turn or intersection isn't marked. If the road or intersection is marked, it isn't on the map! Obviously, the mapmakers can't keep up as they are building freeways and bypasses like construction companies gone mad. The entire I-35 corridor through Austin is torn to pieces and a jumble of detours. Bumper to bumper traffic crawls at every intersection and it's totally understandable why the state reminds everyone to "drive friendly". Our usual M.O. of rubbernecking and checking out the area is not going to happen here. We'll wait for my cousin, a long time resident to do the driving and take us into this state capital to see the sights.

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