Blatherings From The Editor

The Freeway

(June 2006) 

  Love ‘em or hate ‘em, our extensive freeway system makes getting from point A to point B easier and, more than likely, faster than riding the plethora of country roads crisscrossing the US of A.  That’s the good part about freeways.  There are a bunch of other parts that make riding the freeway an experience, for sure.

     Not all freeways are created equal.  You have the black top variety and the concrete variety.  The ba-lump, ba-lump, ba-lump oscillation that a concrete freeway can pound into your arms and butt will drive you crazy.  Can even give you nerve damage on tautly strung sport bikes.  Ask me how I know.  From the construction we saw along I-10 out to Mississippi and back this past month, unfortunately concrete seems to be the medium of choice.

     There always seems to be swirling wind currents along the slab.  Truck buffeting, depending on the wind direction, can really give you a wake up call.  Cross winds broken up by trucks traveling in the opposite direction can give you a flapping.

     And with all that heavy iron traveling along at warp factor bazillion, accidents on the freeways can be really bad.  Keeping your distance from all that iron can be difficult, especially when the freeway bisects a big city and the trucks are in the fast lane doing 10 or 15 over.  Ever see a truck tire blow out?  I definitely get on by the big rigs as fast as I can.

     But not all is bad.  Finding a hotel/motel along the freeway is usually easy.  Gas stations of your preferred brand are probably in abundance; and restaurants of every description are as close as the next exit.  If you are interested in tourist attractions along the way, there are usually huge billboards telling you about them.  Side excursions off the concrete slab help break up the monotony of miles of cruise controlled speeds.

     Wanda and I definitely prefer country roads to freeways.  There are lots of things to see and in many instances a lot less traffic to deal with.  Still, when getting there is the thing, nothing beats rolling along the freeway gobbling up the miles.  Deryle & Wanda, recently freewayed out.