driving in tx

Every major city has its traffic, I realize that. But this is the first time I have ever had to experience a major city road system. In Texas. The road system down here is literally messed up. I have even met Texans that agree with me (which says A LOT for a Texan to say something negative about the state). Some of what I have heard is the city grew too fast and instead of re-constructing, they simply added on here and there and did a lot of patch work.

To begin with, there are pot holes that can swallow my car whole...even on the interstate. There are too many people that do not know the "rules" of the road. For example, the way left lane is the passing lane, right? Wrong. Here, the way left lane is the, "I am going to get all the way over 5 lanes of traffic and park my cruise at 60 and not move." It just does not work.

Another thing to get used to in the this city is the road overpass "bridges." It is very different form MN, where they cannot do a lot of that due to the weather. Here it seems all roads are up in the air, some in the city here are 4 tiers high...can you image a car in MN hitting a patch of ice and spinning out of control and falling 100 ft down off of the overpass? It would never work. Here, if it is even a hint of possibility that it will get to 32º F, people stay home.

Enough about my rant of the Texas road system. I found this photo that I thought was a good decpiction of the road system. Artisit Chris Chappell illistrates it quite well: