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A few thoughts about the area:

By now I'm sure you've seen in the news the reports of the crazy heat wave blowing across the western US right now. Las Vegas hitting 116 - that's hot!. Pheonix getting scary records around 120? - that's also hot! 

 

As many of you know by now, my family and I are now residents of the great state of Washington (well, not officially yet... right now we're "just visiting" - but soon), and there is one thing I would like to convey  to my fellow Washintonians: 

86 degrees F is NOT hot!

In fact, 86F is quite enjoyable. Sure, most places don't have AC, but this area is filled with apartment and condo complexes, and most of these complexes have multiple pools and have common areas that do have AC. But why would you need AC? Because this weather is not hot. 

There's a nice gentle breeze, there's the ocean air, there are trees literally everywhere. The air is not humid, it's got a little moisture in it, but no where near humid by midwest standards. 

Whoever designed the highway interchanges should get a talkin' to:

Traffic is pretty bad over here in the Puget Sound area. Any by pretty bad, I mean horribly unessessary bad. Why is it unnessesay you may ask? As far as I can tell there are two specific reasons:

1. Many of the people are transplants from other countries. Microsoft, Amazon, etc are constantly recruiting from all over the world. This means smashing drivers from all different areas with different driving styles into one small little area.
2. The roads were designed by someone who maybe should have paid more attention in road design class.

Allow for me to ruin your eyes with my awesome MS Paint skills and describe how the roads are laid out here.

 

This is a perfect example of some craziness. Ok, so lets say the main highway is northbound 405. The highways up here have a dedicated car pool lane in the far left (or the far right if you're on the 520... consistency be damned here). This means that during rush hour, everyone who is carpooling is dying to zoom over to the far left as fast as they can. Which means is they're merging on from... say... the 520 - they are merging 5 times. 5 FREAKING TIMES. But of course, let's not forget about the people merging on from the left... yes... the left. Now, the people merging on from the left are NOT carpooling, which means that they have to merge twice so they get out of the carpool lane. 

Add all thing to humanity's innability to merge properly in the first place, and now you can see why traffic is horrible here. 

Ugh.. traffic.

copyright... uh... the makers of The Whole Nine Yards... or something.