If anyone is in the Dallas / Fort Worth area, could you drop this off at any local Department of Transportation for me?
Summary
Dear Texas D.O.T.
Kindly go fuck yourselves.
Warmest Regards,
ODaily.
P.S. Your Mothers and Sisters too.
As to why I would write such a missive:
I am a firm believer in road based symmetry. Basically if a road takes you from point a to point b, then it should also take you from b to a. Apparently this isn’t a thing in DFW. I followed I-30 to 635 to 20 down the east side of town when heading to Austin. My return trip should have been as simple as following 20 back up, but no. That route takes you up the west side of DFW. When I figured that out, I thought, “No problem, I-30 runs across east / west through here, I’ll just pick that up and go east.” Unfortuneatly, they never bothered to connect the north bound lanes of 20 to I-30. Which I figured out after stopping about 30-40 minutes north of I-30 when I had to turn around. At least they did connect the south bound lanes. This basically led me to going all the way around DFW, way up north on a loop, and then cutting back through from one side to the other, in heavy downtown traffic.
The other remarkable thing about DFW roads is the extreme overuse of fly-over bridges. In my mind I believe that the origin story of this extemist style would go something thusly. At some point a DFW civil engineer must have found himself in Notre Dame examining the intricate archways of the ceiling. Upon becoming enamored of them he would have remarked to a friend that DFW could sure use such glorious architecture to bring the populace closer to God himself. Of course the friend in a moment of clarity would have said that in order to work, the arches would have to be built so tall as give anyone passing over such an anxiety attack as to cause them to have a come to Jesus moment and call out for God’s help. The engineer would then have returned to DFW and given one of his interns a map, a sharpie, and a couple of tabs of LSD with instructions to draw swirls and loops on the map. They’ve just been stacking the roadways one on top of the other ever since in an effort to get tall enough to kick off a mass epiphany.
The local drivers complete the trifecta. In most towns you can group drivers into 3 types. The first is the slower people, usually U-hauls and Rvs. The second (and majority of the drivers) drive just about the speed limit. The third and smallest group are the occasional speedster. In DFW the whole paradigm is shifted. The U-hauls and Rvs are barreling along fairly dangerously at the limit, the vast majority of the drivers are blasting by about 15mph above the limit, and those who would normally be speedsters have apparently had their moment in the skyway with God and now believe they’re piloting cruise missiles in a four lane slot car race. To add a little more danger to the mix, for some unknown reason, and at random times, large blocks of drivers just slow down to about 20mph very suddenly leaving everyone else to stand on the brakes and hope everyone behind them gets it shut down in time.
My trek home was winding, long, and nerve wracking.
So, yeah, I did DFW today.