Traffic

Today, I'm finally going to gripe about something that's been bothering me for a LONG time. Ever since the late 1800s, when the transportation department apparently started this road improvement project that never seems to show any signs of improving.

I get on I-94 to go to work, and I always pull out of the county road that we live on and stay in the right lane. This is because I know that the left lane is going to end, and I want to not have to squeeze in at the last minute. Now, I am not the only one who knows about this lane ending thing. Theoretically, so do the people who just happen to be passing through this area, and observe the "left lane ends" orange construction-style signs that appear a few miles before the cones make the lane merge into the right lane and go away.

Problem is, I don't know what people are thinking when they see the "left lane ends; merge right" directives. Because the minute that sign comes into view, people start making a beeline for the left lane, apparently trying to beat as many vehicles as possible into the front of the single lane of traffic. About half the time, this turns into a backup (and occasionally a pileup) because if you rush to the front of the line and can't get anyone to let you in when the lane ends, you have to stop, and this results in traffic getting slower and slower until I end up having a headache before I even get to work.

Unless to the people coming down the state highway near my home it is perpetually opposite day, I have to conclude that there's a good chance they might be...well...stupid? Or just really competitive?

This is the kind of thing that turns every morning's commute into a philosophical debate within my own head, and I end up exhausted before I can even check my morning e-mail. And if I'm exhausted by the time I hear about K-Fed's latest misadventure as reported in the gossip blogosphere, then I'm in no shape to read my National Enquirer....and that's just sad.