Travel is good for a number of reasons one of which is that it makes you appreciate what you have right here at home. For instance, something as simple as roads makes you glad that you live in the U.S. where our roads are fantastic compared to what you find elsewhere in the world.
Granted, we have some infrastructure work to do as our Interstate system is old and in need of upgrading. (Excellent article here discusses the increase in Public-Private-Partnerships or P3s. These are roads built by private contractors who then maintain them while they charge tolls to use them.)
However, bottom line is that our overall road system tops anything anyone else has. Remember too, that in continental US we have 3.8 million square miles to negotiate compared to say France with only 250,000 square miles. By comparison, Texas alone has 270,000 square miles.
I recall once being on a bus in South Africa heading south and our tour guide bragged about the fact that we were travelling over their first modern highway and how nice it was. Buzzy leaned over my bus seat and said “That tells you something when they’re talking about the first good road that they have here.”
All of this crossed my mind a couple times last week as I spent several hours bouncing around in the back seat of the car we rented. Thankfully, the couple we were traveling with, Philip and Meryl, were used to negotiating European windy roads and didn’t mind driving everywhere we went. This freed Pam and me up to relax in the back seat and enjoy the scenery while Philip fought the twisty turns and confusing round-abouts.
We paid extra for a GPS and it was worth every penny even if our gal did mess up a couple of times and send us down the wrong exit. In her defense though it is confusing as hell when she tells you take the second exit in the roundabout and you’re not really sure which is the second exit because there are little roads and driveways streaming out of the roundabout before you get to one that she wanted you to take. We heard “Recalculating route” several times during our day trips around the area.
The southeast coast of France is known as their French Riveria/Cote D’azur. While it has a nice modern highway dubbed the A8 that stretches from Nice over to Toulon, to get to the Riveria you have to exit the A8 at St. Raphael and undertake a twisty, spaghetti mess of a road along the coast and up in the hills. Think Flat Iron Road only much more scenic. (Come on, admit it, Bubby Knott’s farm is about the only thing or place worth looking at on Flat Iron Road. Flat Iron should be re-named Boring-As-Shit-Iron Road.)
When I made a comment to Philip about the road’s condition, he informed me that the road was actually not too bad when compared to others in Europe that he has encountered. To me it was like an amusement park ride that went very slow.
I never much cared for Canned Heat’s On The Road Again. Usually I like falsetto sung songs but not this one because the singer sounded like he was either sick or about to croak. Canned Heat adapted their version from a 1928 Tommy Johnson tune as follows: