OK - this post should probably be titled "Another of the myriad reasons to hate Washington, D.C., with a passion." But since that title is too long and since my point of comparison is Lynchburg, I'm going to use this to lay out another reason why we love Lynchburg (and not D.C.).
I normally try to work from home on Fridays because it is so difficult to get out of Washington, D.C., on a Friday. The roads are in pretty good shape until about 10:00 am, when seemingly everyone traveling up and down the entire East Coast begins to drive through the D.C. Metro area. If you thought grid-lock in D.C. referred only to the government, think again. The roads are essentially unusable beginning on Friday late-morning and stay that way until late Sunday night.
In defense of the D.C. area roads, the pictures I took as I attempted to drive home today were clogged by an accident. This was one of four major accidents that I heard about in the traffic reports. All four accidents required Medevac helicopters and all four of them completely shut down every single lane of the four-lane and five-lane highways they happened on for more than two hours each.
These photos are from the beltway, which had two of the four accidents—one on the western side of the beltway near Tysons Corner (Gallows Road, to be exact) and the other on the opposite side just before the Woodrow Wilson bridge. One was on the inner loop and the other was on the outer loop. So the traffic was brought to a stand-still with all four lanes being blocked both clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time of day, just before the heavy part of the terrible Washington rush hour.
So I haven't talked about the traffic in Lynchburg yet. That's because there is none. The folks here complain about how bad the traffic is with such phrases as "I had to wait for the light to change twice before I got through," or "There were five cars in front of me at the light" or "it took me more than 10 minutes to get to the other side of town!" We never even left our house on Saturdays when we lived in DC because a trip to the local pharmacy took four to five hours in commute time. And the pharmacy was less than four miles from our house.
So - I encourage everyone to visit Washington. Make sure you take your car. And please don't visit Lynchburg. We want to make sure we make it through the light the first time it changes.
The outer loop accident before the Wilson Bridge happened in front of me. Drunk driver from PA in a Saturn VUE hit the left jersey wall attenuator and bounced backward into motorcycle going 70mph, who flew 20 feet up in the air before coming down on the pavement. He was talking when paramedics arrived, medevac landed and took him to hospital, Drunk driver of SUV failed the field test, blew a 2.0 at 2pm!! and was taken to jail. Motorcycle was weaving in and out before wreck, though. Drive shaft of SUV embedded in jersey wall, miracle nobody died. Helmet made the difference.
ReplyDeleteWow! Who in the world would drive drunk in DC traffic on a Friday afternoon. Absolutely amazing.
ReplyDeleteThat's my normal commute...Fortunately I was out of my office yesterday by 3, so 495 wasn't that bad...95 south was another story. It took me 1 1/2 hours to get from Tysons to Dale Blvd. Lynchburg is beginning to look better and better. Any good job openings down there???
ReplyDeleteaww man, do I remember DC. Here, the only traffic we have is a horse or tractor! (Jonesborough, TN) We're not that far from you three, actually.
ReplyDelete