Tag: driving

Wow, I didn’t think they’d actually do it (AKA Oh, Georgia #560)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: Georgia to build a professional cricket stadium, in LaGrange

It’s been a while since I had an old-fashioned diatribe about a sports stadium, yeah?  I mean the Braves had pretty much run out of stadiums to build and fleece the local taxpayers over, Atlanta United already got their stadium, their training ground, as well as USA Soccer down in Fayetteville.  The purported temu-Battery in Forsyth/Dawsonville designed to attract an NHL expansion team still seems like there’s lots of room for failure to occur or for people to open their eyes and realize that they’re being swindled.

So it actually seemed like Georgia had hit somewhat of a saturation point as far as the necessity to build any more unnecessary sporting venues, and it actually has been a little quiet over majority of the last decade.

It was actually back in July of 2017 in which I first caught wind of there being interest in a cricket stadium in Georgia, and considering it didn’t happen immediately, I guess I let my guard down at thinking that perhaps, the state finally found their breaking point as far as not dropping what they’re doing in order to build some wholly unnecessary project in order for some rich white people to smokescreen a town into usurping public funds to line their coffers with.

But never say never, and never underestimate the tenacity of the greedy in order to pursue schemes in order to make a lot of money, but it seems that a decade later, Georgia will be getting its own fucking cricket stadium too because that’s totally what this state needs instead of improved infrastructure, mass transit, affordable housing, or even more chicken tender or bougie donut joints.

In one hand, I want to say that in all fairness, there are a shitload of Indian people in the Metro Atlanta area, specifically Smyrna/Vinings, where it literally feels like residential zones from India were plucked out of the ground like Sim City and dropped there, and at least in my observations, nobody loves cricket more than that specific demographic, so there stands to be belief that there could be a demand. 

However, that would be somewhere remotely near Smyrna/Vinings and not way the fuck out in LaGrange, where contrary to ANF’s reporting’s claims, is very much not a part of Metro Atlanta.  Without traffic, it’s like 75 miles southwest of Smyrna/Vinings and maybe 90 minutes, but given the fact that there’s never not traffic in the actual Metro Atlanta area, it’s probably more of a three-hour trek to get down to LaGrange, which is closer to the Alabama state line than it is to Atlanta, much less Newnan, the first bastion of civilization heading east from there.

I really can’t imagine that all the Indians and/or cricket fans that will undoubtedly spawn because there’s nothing whiter than glomping onto the new thing to pretend like you’ve been a fan all along, will still be willing to travel all the way to LaGrange in order to watch cricket matches, because the traffic will suck where I-85 chokes down from three lanes to two at Newnan, and if there’s any modicum of demand, then the shitty small town infrastructure will get their asses beat while they try to figure things out.

Not that I’m going to care enough in 2027 to keep my ear to the ground at the results, but I’d be interested if they were fed to me.

But in the other hand, Georgia just doesn’t need yet another fucking sporting venue, especially for such an L-tier sport like cricket.  Even if the construction of it will boost the local economy with probably a few hundred minimum wage paying job opportunities, studies have shown that in lieu of massive multi-million dollar projects like sporting venues, there’s more money to be had at building spaces that accommodate conventions and conferences, and keeping low-maintenance events churning on a regular basis actually feeds economies better than sporting venues do.

Whatever though, I thought I’d have a little bit more venom to spit in regards to this, but I don’t.  Perhaps because it’s being built in LaGrange, Alabama and remotely nowhere near the actual Metro Atlanta area, and doesn’t stand to impact my taxes whatsoever that takes a lot of heat out of my desire to be on offense.  But I still think it’s really foolish and unnecessary all the same, and if Georgia is gung-ho about building joints for shit like cricket, I guess it’s only a matter of time before they begin to start having talks about building sporting venues for shit like Ultimate Frisbee or professional Quiddich.

Phelps County probably smells delicious right now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Hill: tractor trailer carrying 40,000 lbs. of ribeye steaks catches fire on I-74 in Missouri

Normally, I don’t bother writing about trucks full of food stuffs catching fire or overturning unless they happen in Georgia, but every now and then there are a few examples that pique my interest to the point where I can turn the clock back and write about truck carnage at the expense of delicious foods.

But headlines talking about a truck full of steaks catching fire got my attention, and specifically the fact that they weren’t just any old run of the mill steaks, but forty thousand pounds of ribeye steaks specifically that caught my attention.

The devil is in the details.

Sure, there is a time and place for every cut of steak, and sometimes I’ve just been in the mood for a good New York strip, sometimes a big ass porterhouse.  Sometimes just the filet is sufficient, if I want to luxuriate in all the other sides and courses.  But for the most part, there’s seldom a time when a good ribeye isn’t a viable option for a steak, and learning of this truck disaster where several tons of ribeye steaks went up in flames definitely got my big back attention.

Naturally, I’m long past the first person to probably make the joke about how delicious I-74 in Missouri must smell at the idea of all this succulent beef going up in flames, but it’s probably not wrong.  The whole region with a multiple mile radius probably smells like an incredible barbecue is going on, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Missouri is that the state knows how to barbecue, apparently even on the physical highways itself.

However, I do have to question the quality of the steaks, if they’re in a parcel of 40,000 lbs of other ribeyes.  I have to imagine that they were probably of the frozen variety to begin with, and probably nowhere near high-end restaurant quality cuts that most people fantasize about when they’re thinking about a good steak.  As I said, the devil is in the details, and I’d be curious to know if these were like Dollar General hockey puck steaks, or if they were closer to like Outback Steakhouse steaks.  That’s the intel that separates a ho-hum run of the mill truck disaster from one that people talk about for years to come.

Either way, congrats to Missouri for having a truck catastrophe that sounded so grand and probably smelled so good, to where it warranted words to be spouted on my little slice of the internet.

Is this anyone else’s experience or just mine?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously, it’s arrogant of me to assume that I’m the only person in the world who deals with this on a regular basis, but who really knows; I might be the only one who thinks about it to length enough to blab about it in a brog that nobody reads.  The point remains however, that this is still a phenomenon that I deal with on a daily basis, and I’m curious to know just how much this is the case in places all around the country and the rest of the world.

But I can’t help but feel like this is a behavior that spawned from life after the murderous peak of COVID.  I’ve said it many times, that I kind of miss the COVID era, minus all the senseless death and tragedies to people who really didn’t deserve it, but if there was one thing that was really nice about the whole pandemic is that it sure as hell made the roads really, really nice to drive around on.

I never really minded the early onset of return to office, because I quickly learned how much more efficiently I worked when I was in the office setting, plus it gave me the opportunity to formally return to a gym regimen.  But the commutes to and from the office were that of dreams, being able to leave the house at 8:45 and make it to the office at 8:57, almost nobody else walking into the building, almost always having an elevator to myself.

Now, I’m fucked if I leave the house at anything after 8:35, and I usually get to the parking lot at 8:55 if I’m lucky, and there’s always a ton of other people headed into the building at the same time, and I often have to get into an elevator with 2-4 other people where inevitably someone will be coughing, peaking my anxiety about getting sick because we’re long past the days of masks in public.

And in the midst of my obnoxious commute, is a whole fucking lot of this bullshit behavior; people camping the left lanes way long in advance, because they need to get ready to get on the highway, a lightyear away.

I really feel like this really started happening after COVID, because during COVID, driving behaviors in general kind of reset all over the place, and lots of common sense behavior and tendencies were forgotten all over the place.  Left is the fast lane, right for slower drivers, right-of-way rules, all of that shit seems to have been forgotten, as lots of olds have died off and stopped driving outright, and there was even a point where dumbass 17-year olds didn’t even have to take behind-the-wheel training in order to get a license.

But left lane camping, as what I like to call it, seems to have gone way the fuck up since COVID restrictions and return-to-office mandates have come into play.  There are two major left turns that I have to make on my morning commute, and it’s ridiculous the amount of camping that goes on, every single morning, by people who want to get in their lane that inevitably takes them to the left-turn lane they eventually need to be in, as early as humanly possible, regardless of how many other motorists might need to be in them, get into them, for them to make sooner left turns than they do.

There’s a stretch that’s jump into every morning where it’s around four miles until you get to the highway; every single morning, commuters pile into the one lane that inevitably dead-ends into the left turn lane of said intersection as early as humanly possible.  It doesn’t matter how empty the adjacent lane is, people will fight gangbusters in order to get into this particular lane so they don’t have to worry about switching again for the next four miles.

And not only do they give no fucks about getting passed or how much they’re inconveniencing motorists who need to turn in one mile, two miles or three miles, nobody is going to move them out of their lane to where they might actually have to put some effort into driving.

Heaven forbid you try to squeeze in at any point, because once these types of drivers get into their desired lane, they will defend their spot like they’re a Spartan warrior against the forces of Xerxes.

Naturally, the second major left turn that I need to make every day is the one that takes me to my office building.  The thing is, there are three different ways I can enter, but they all require a left turn to get in; my preferred one is the last one, as it is the closest to my actual building, but I’m not picky, if I see that the first or the second one has a green light, I’ll do it, just so I can get out of the petty rat race of left lane campers who will trudge along in a voluminous lane, because they need to get onto the highway that’s five miles away.

And honestly, it’s getting worse; since the school year started, and commuters are in an adjustment phase to their daily routes, to account for school buses and elevated traffic, I’m finding that on my route home, there are tons of people now camping the left lanes on my way home, where this was not the case just a few weeks ago.

It’s among my biggest pet peeves now when it comes to observing the behavior of the drivers all around me, and it’s times like these when I’m stuck behind a bullshit line of cars in a left lane, while everyone in the adjacent and right-er lanes are flying by, I begin to pine for the days of coronavirus, when so many of these shitheads were simply off the roads altogether.

Virginia is the worst place in the country to drive

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Whatever a traffic sign estimates in Virginia, assume it to be double, for accuracy.

Typically, whenever I visit my old stomping grounds, I fly into whichever Northern Virginia airport has the most availability (usually DCA), and then I’m at the mercy of whomever is willing to give me rides or let me borrow cars, in order to do my business or get from point A to B on my own volition.

Over the span of the last year or so, be it for a myriad of circumstances, I’ve grown really weary over the notion of traveling in and out of the greater Washington D.C. area airports.  Old convention doesn’t seem to apply like it used to.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a trip where I didn’t get tragically locked in place in some leg of my trip.  Demand to or from D.C. is unpredictable and completely without logic, and I’ve had flights that looked open fill up at the drop of a hat due to weather, or some giant student group being unaccounted for until it was time to board the plane.

Needless to say, I took an opportunity to try something new during my last visit up to Virginia, because in theory it seemed like a very good idea: fly into Richmond, pick up rental car, drive to NOVA, Charlottesville, NOVA, Richmond, and leave from Richmond.  Richmond has direct flights to and from Atlanta, is a smaller airport with a smaller demand to and from Atlanta, and with a rental car, I wouldn’t have to inconvenience anyone for rides, or take time away from them.

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