On the Road Again, and None Too Happy

I am taking names.

I am sitting in an overpacked car on an overpacked highway, at the boiling point of a sweltering August day, and as three lanes of vacationer-to-vacationer traffic jams merge into two lanes of vacationer-to-vacationer traffic, I am taking names.

I am taking the name of the individual who is responsible for designing the system in which three lanes of fast-moving traffic merge into two lanes. Was there a mix-up? Was something lost in the translation? Did he mean to squeeze two lanes of traffic into three lanes? Because that might work, even late on a Saturday morning at the height of vacation season.

But three lanes into two, yeah, I got his name right on the top of the list, just below that of the guy who came up with the idea for the traffic circle.

The heat is unbearable, mid-90s, humid, no breeze. Yet the air is crisp compared with the shimmering waves of blast-furnace radiation rising from the road.

The person who invented blacktop? It had to be black? It couldn’t have been white, or maybe something in linen? Yeah, I’m taking his name. Another name I want is that of the guy who engineered automobile air-conditioning.

Automobile air-conditioning is a wonderful thing, when you are moving. When you are sitting in a creeping line of stop-and-roll traffic, all air-conditioning does is make engine lights glow.

We can put a man into cyberspace, grow hair on the bald, but we can’t make an automobile air-conditioning system that doesn’t take your car engine to Defcon-1 when you are stranded in summer traffic?

OK, so I’m getting a little testy.

My car is now next to a tractor-trailer truck, which, judging from its decibel level, is powered by the same engine as the Concorde’s.

There is no escape.

I am taking the name of the cell-phone-yakking driver directly in front of me, who doesn’t move until the gap between her and the next car is 100 feet or so.

I am taking the name of the dude behind me, whose pumped-up radio bass is making my brain pulsate. And I am taking the name of the moron who has just driven past in the breakdown lane. Shouldn’t we be allowed to shoot at these people?

Vacation, yeah. Getting there is half the fun.

Shea is a columnist for the Hartford Courant, a Tribune company.