ugh cars

[jazzfish]

Here in the greater DC area, there are places that make me uneasy: my awful ex's house and environs, the mansions in McLean, that one stretch of 295 in the district where I always run out of lane before I expect to.

There are places here that irritate me: my parents' house which is at least twenty minutes from anything, 95 south between three and eight PM on a weekday, The Mosaic District (a suburbanite's idea of what a city looks like).

There is no place, anywhere, that will reduce me to yelling and swearing faster than Seven Corners.

Seven Corners is several shopping centres nestled at the intersection of three major highways and one minor road. To call it a birds'-nest is an insult to birds, who build perfectly orderly and functional structures that perform their intended duties. Entering Seven Corners by car is a good way to ensure that whichever way you leave is not the way you intended. (Exceptions made for attempting to leave on the same road you came in on, in which case closing your eyes and gunning it will sometimes work.)

I have it on good authority that the interchanges were designed in the shape of a glyph to invoke Lh'Nurh, the dark god at the middle of the labyrinth who feasts on human frustration. The movement of cars along the flyways serves only to increase his power.

I escaped with my sanity intact. This time.

Comments

[reedrover]

And now I want to go re-read Good Omens.

[jazzfish]

*g* I always imagined the M25 as being like the worse bits of the beltway: horribly confusing and if (when) you miss your exit you're stuck until you go 'round again, but other than that basically non-hostile. Seven Corners is made *entirely* of hostile. You enter and fifteen minutes later you come out on a different road going the wrong direction.