Fun with Roads

...or Jollity with the Highway Department.
...or More Amusing Ways Governments Can Vex People.

There is a reason that Atlanta has horrid traffic. Part of this has to do with a severe lack of signage (whether this has to do with literacy levels in the city, I dare not hazard a proposal. A riot might be instigated.). I have already mentioned the blind 175* left-hand turn that was successfully telepathically negotiated the other day.

Well, yesterday's entertainment involved one street actually being two streets. What is terrifically clever and cunning about this is that they have the same name mostly (i.e., North Ponce de Leon Avenue and South Ponce de Leon Avenue). This would lead one to assume that they are possibly connected in some way. There are also these little tags at the end of certain parts of said streets (and many others in this silly highway joke), such as NE, NW, SE, N, S, HellInHandBasket -- another bit of cunning comes into play as these tags actually have little to do with the cartographically approximate direction of this particular part of the street nor, as far as I can tell, much with the direction in which you seem to be travelling. But I digress.

Guffaws and choking giggles begin when one realises that going south (or NE, or SW, or to HiHB) on Ponce de Leon (at the point where it is non-tagged, either pre- or post-) is not getting one any closer to South Ponce de Leon. You have previously been on North Ponce de Leon and your mapping of your destination shows it to be really close by. You are apparently driving right past your destination (backwards and forwards) and it is either hidden under an invisibility cloak or perhaps exists in a parallel universe and you have forgotten your Subtle Knife to cut through.

After driving in circles for quite a while, you think (relative to the highway department's razor-sharp sense of humour) that perhaps those little parks off to your right, with semi-circular drives (and no damnable signs, of course) just might get you closer to your destination. Lo, and behold! Your guess is correct!

However, the first semi-circle ends about 100 numbers off from your goal. You curse and attempt to turn left onto the trompe de l'oeil Ponce de Leon. You find the next ridiculous semi-circle a block up but it appears to be only one way, and you begin to despair as you are obviously dimmer than the students who are able to find their own school and why would they want to talk to you anyway, when you spy a small and very naturalistic (and therefore mostly camoflauged) sign with the school's name on the one-way street. With fortitude, you venture further up looking for the optimal place to turn left, not letting the campus out of your sight just in case it goes back into hiding, and you finally reach the car pool lane 3 minutes late (but there is a lovely counselor who is fabulously okay with you being tardy, and there is even a doggie named Zoe who lives in the counselling office, so that was pleasant!).

*******
As if all that weren't enough to force wetting of one's pants from uncontrollable laughter, there are other areas of town where it appears that the highway people were having a off-day creatively speaking. Every blinking street is a version of the same root! There are:

Paces Ferry Road SE (which is northeast of NW, below)
Paces Ferry Road NW (which is southeast of SE, above)
W Paces Ferry Road NW (which is east of both of the above)
Paces Mill Road SE (which is NE of the first listing)
Paces Ferry Drive SE
New Paces Ferry Road SE
Paces Forest Drive
Paces Forest Road
Paces W Drive NW (whatever THAT means)
Paces Valley Road NW
Paces Ferry Place NW (which is almost due north off West Paces Ferry Road NW)
East Paces Ferry Road NE (which is actually kind of southeast of the whole kerfuffle)
Paces Ferry Circle SE
Paces Park Circle SE
Paces Vinings Drive SE
Paces Place NW
Old Paces Place NW
W Paces Ferry Court NW

Some of these roads make abrupt right and left turns with absolutely no warning or signage. Sometimes, the same road becomes two roads of mostly the same name again. This is vexing. There are some other names of roads off this ridiculous network of incestuous road system, but these roads are also espoused to their first cousins and siblings on a regular basis, adding to an air of general confusion.

So, am now hot and tired and my eyes hurt and was forced into retail therapy while waiting until I can set up for tomorrow's college fair. I mean, the Highway Department made me do it!