Observations on life

[MurphCID]

Some observations on life:

In San Antonio, the best parking spot is not the closest, it is the one with the most shade. For those who live in south central Texas you know what I mean.

[JerryF]

Indeed!

[all41]

I know exactly what you mean. I lived in Phoenix a few years.
I parked at the airport for a few days with windows completely closed.
There was a thin layer of fine talc-like dust on the dash. When the AC started a puff
of dust came out of each vent.

[BenTrabetere]

Travel Tip:
For long-term parking at an airport, find a lot that offers covered parking and pay the extra couple of $/day. It is a good investment at twice the price, if only to protect against a hail storm.

For those who live in south central Texas

... you live in comfort compared your fellow Texicans living in Houston. San Antonio has humidity, but nothing like Houston. Houston does have more and better shade.

I lived in the DFW area for nearly 20 years. One time my office got an upper New England transplant - she arrived in early Autumn, and one of her first questions was "When to the leaves turn here?" A co-worker sneered, "Middle of July." She asked, "Fall comes that early?" And he said, "Naw, that's when the trees just start to up and die."

Sweet lady. Even learned how to use "Y'all" and "fixin' to" properly. Never did learn to say "Howdy", though.

[MurphCID]

You are right, Houston is the land of quick growing mold, and humidity. Ugh, plus it is the only place I have ever told my wife to "Shut up" and meant it. She was scaring the crud out of me while I was driving in downtown traffic, and she was used to San Antonio traffic which is NOTHING compared to Houston traffic. My kids understand that "Yonder" as in "...it's over yonder" is a perfectly good direction.

[Portreve]

Observations on Life: Living in Florida

There are two stereotypes about Florida: the first is that it is a land of old people; the second is half the population is nothing but tourists.

While the latter is true, particularly if you do not live somewhere so remote that sunlight, much less electricity, has yet to plant its flag upon your property, the former is most definitely not. There is an alternative to it: that Florida is the land of the newly wed and the nearly dead. That is still not quite correct, though it is much closer to being accurate.

The thing about Florida being the land of tourists and seasonal residents is that it makes it difficult to drive when there's often completely different sets of driving norms being followed by one's fellow vehicle operators. I'm told driving in Miami is not for the faint-hearted; I've never been there, so I can't vouch for this personally. However, it makes sense because cops are less likely to pull you over for speeding, given all the other and arguably far more interesting things people do with their cars there.

Florida, of course, doesn't have to deal with snow and ice on the roads, but we do have another issue that's like black ice: road slicks. As with anywhere else, there's all kinds of unholy and unnatural substances on the road surface. When it rains, this exacerbates the situation, yielding conditions similar to black ice. What makes it worse is that often you have no way of knowing this has happened. Up north during the winter, it's easier to assume if it's been snowing in your region, you might have ice-slicked highways. However, in the summer, it can often have rained between you and your destination, and by the time you drive through the affected area, the weather conditions are sunny and beautiful. The rather large dent you leave in the back of the car of the person in front of you will only be a bit less impressive than the shock you'll have received from the completely crushed-in front end of your own car. Oh yeah, and whiplash. That's always a gas.

[BenTrabetere]

@MurphCID
There are cities where the traffic is as bad or worse than Houston traffic; the only one I have experienced is Atlanta. There are parts of Dallas-Fort Worth where the traffic is scary, but the only two that come close to Houston traffic on a good day are the interchanges on LBJ Freeway at Stemmons Freeway and at Central Expressway. The High Five Interchange is the stuff of nightmares.

@Portreve
There is third stereotype about Florida, but you have to go to Western North Carolina to find it. I worked in the Asheville, NC for a summer, and I learned that "Florida people" are visitors who do not know how to drive in the hills and mountains. Usually there was an epithet attached.

Does 'Florida has a lot of sunny beaches living there' count as a stereotype?

[Pjotr]

Try long-time parking alongside the kerb in Amsterdam.... Or much better yet: don't. Shortest route to bankruptcy:
https://www.amsterdam.info/parking/

The hourly price for on-street parking in the Amsterdam city center is 5 euro ($ 5.84) and a day ticket goes from 30 to 45 euro.

Note that it's getting even worse pretty soon: the new car-hating left-wing city government has announced that it'll increase the hourly tariff to 7.50 euro ($ 8.76).

[Portreve]

"Florida people"

Oh, trust me: Florida is the original "Here, hold my beer" state.

...who do not know how to drive in the hills and mountains.

Florida is almost exclusively flat land. There's some slight undulating, rolling hills in Central Florida, and they probably get a bit more profound as you go northward, but in southern Florida for the most part, and universally when you're within 50 miles (~ 80km) of the coast, it's ALL flat.

Frankly, it's probably even worse if you're dealing with a Florida driver who's using a stick shift.

@MurphCID
There are cities where the traffic is as bad or worse than Houston traffic; the only one I have experienced is Atlanta.

I've driven IN (and not just through) Atlanta, and I'll personally vouch for that. Holy excrement, Batman.

[MurphCID]

Atlanta scares me, I did it once back in 1983 when I was at fort benning, and it was nightmarish then.

[JerryF]

Try long-time parking alongside the kerb in Amsterdam.... Or much better yet: don't. Shortest route to bankruptcy:
https://www.amsterdam.info/parking/

The hourly price for on-street parking in the Amsterdam city center is 5 euro ($ 5.84) and a day ticket goes from 30 to 45 euro.

Note that it's getting even worse pretty soon: the new car-hating left-wing city government has announced that it'll increase the hourly tariff to 7.50 euro ($ 8.76).

Yikes! I live 15 miles from the capital city of Rhode Island, which is Providence. They have metered parking, but you can still find off-streets that you can park for free.

[Pjotr]

Try long-time parking alongside the kerb in Amsterdam.... Or much better yet: don't. Shortest route to bankruptcy:
https://www.amsterdam.info/parking/

The hourly price for on-street parking in the Amsterdam city center is 5 euro ($ 5.84) and a day ticket goes from 30 to 45 euro.

Note that it's getting even worse pretty soon: the new car-hating left-wing city government has announced that it'll increase the hourly tariff to 7.50 euro ($ 8.76).

Yikes! I live 15 miles from the capital city of Rhode Island, which is Providence. They have metered parking, but you can still find off-streets that you can park for free.

The Amsterdam parking rates are extreme even for Dutch standards, but the Dutch government taxes car ownership(!) and fuel horribly as well.... To give you an idea: for one American gallon of regular gasoline (i.e. 3.79 litres), we pay in the Netherlands currently $ 7.31. And that's the price at cheap tank stations.

Most of that price is taxes, of course....

I must say that I envy the freedom loving spirit of the Americans, who wouldn't dream of letting their government do that to them. Land of the free, home of the brave.... Us Dutchies on the other hand, are meek sheep.

[all41]

I have lived in Houston and LA. I have driven in Chicago, but the absolute nightmare commute--without a doubt was here:

During the middle 70's I lived in Phoenix and the Salt River had not had a trickle of water in decades, and even most Salt River highway and street crossings were just built across the bottom of the dried up riverbed.
The rains turned loose up north and all riverbed crossings closed almost immediately leaving but a handful of bridges in the entire area. The historic flood quickly undermined the newly built bridges, leaving but ONE bridge for the entire city--and that bridge was the oldest of the bunch.

The Tempe bridge was left to handle the entire traffic for the city of Phoenix. Traffic was a snarled mess, a 15 minute commute became three hours.
It gets even worse---the I-10 bridge over Salt River was eventually closed due to undermining concerns.

This meant all I-10 corridor east and westbound traffic was detoured through already jammed city streets to cross the only available crossing, the Tempe Bridge, 18 wheelers and all.
If you look at a map of the Phoenix area you can see how the Salt River divides it, and the location of that Tempe Bridge--imagine the traffic jams.

[JerryF]

The Amsterdam parking rates are extreme even for Dutch standards, but the Dutch government taxes car ownership(!) and fuel horribly as well.... To give you an idea: for one American gallon of regular gasoline (i.e. 3.79 litres), we pay in the Netherlands currently $ 7.31. And that's the price at cheap tank stations.

Most of that price is taxes, of course....

I must say that I envy the freedom loving spirit of the Americans, who wouldn't dream of letting their government do that to them. Land of the free, home of the brave.... Us Dutchies on the other hand, are meek sheep.

Pjotr, that is incredible! Here, we are paying $2.95 per gallon. Only 33 cents is for tax (taxes like these are governed by each state, not federal). We do pay a yearly automobile excise tax, based on valuation, tax rate, and exemptions. It's involved, so I won't get into that but some legislators have been submitting legislation to do away with our "car tax".

America has it's pros and cons. Unfortunately, there are some things here that make us feel as if we're still in the puritan times of the 16th century (i.e. casual drug usage).

[catweazel]

The Amsterdam parking rates are extreme even for Dutch standards, but the Dutch government taxes car ownership(!) and fuel horribly as well.... To give you an idea: for one American gallon of regular gasoline (i.e. 3.79 litres), we pay in the Netherlands currently $ 7.31. And that's the price at cheap tank stations.

Crikey! I thought Australia was bad at around $US4.50 for the same volume.

[all41]

Gas is about $2.59/US gallon in our rural area.

When gas goes down 10% everybody says 'aint that cheap?'

I think like----NOT! It's still 10 times the price.
Back in the day (late 60's) you could still by top rate 100+ octane
for 29.9 at oil company affiliated dealers (such as Shell, Sinclair, etc) and get full service at the pump.

Now you have to pump it yourself, go inside to pay or prepay, and wait in a long checkout line
behind those buying lottery tickets.

How is this better for ten prices?

[DAMIEN1307]

For all of you who have had the aforementioned driving hassles in florida, chicago, houston, DFW, providence, or NYC etc....well let me throw this one at ya...ive driven in all contiguous 48 states of the US as well as ireland, the "wrong" side of the road, (yes, on the left side of the road) as well as mexico and canada in both toronto and montreal, but i can truly attest that the very worst place to ever drive is not NYC, or providence RI, (though providence is a close second, even worse than downtown manhattan), but the honours of the worst driving experience belongs solely to my hometown of Boston Massachusetts...absolutely horrendous...keep in mind that the roads were placed on old cow paths and indian trails, and lets not even mention the equally horrendous parking, or lack thereof, or the awful prices for a parking spot, or during the winter snow storms where the residents place barrels, lawn furniture, or whatever to mark their freshly shoveled out parking spots...and God help anyone who dares to remove these items and takes the spot to park in...lol...DAMIEN

[JerryF]

For all of you who have had the aforementioned driving hassles in florida, chicago, houston, DFW, providence, or NYC etc....well let me throw this one at ya...ive driven in all contiguous 48 states of the US as well as ireland, the "wrong" side of the road, (yes, on the left side of the road) as well as mexico and canada in both toronto and montreal, but i can truly attest that the very worst place to ever drive is not NYC, or providence RI, (though providence is a close second, even worse than downtown manhattan), but the honours of the worst driving experience belongs solely to my hometown of Boston Massachusetts...absolutely horrendous...keep in mind that the roads were placed on old cow paths and indian trails, and lets not even mention the equally horrendous parking, or lack thereof, or the awful prices for a parking spot, or during the winter snow storms where the residents place barrels, lawn furniture, or whatever to mark their freshly shoveled out parking spots...and God help anyone who dares to remove these items and takes the spot to park in...lol...DAMIEN

Yes, Boston is bad. A few people I know take the bus into work from RI because of the drivers and parking.

The barrels brought back memories of the blizzard of 1978 in New England. When you cleared out a spot, it was reserved by barrels, chairs with 2 by 4's, anything that worked!

[HaveaMint]

My biggest gripe in San Antonio traffic is the freeway drivers that do not know how to Merge. There method is to get at the end of the entrance ramp and stop to wait for rush hour to end.

[Pjotr]

The true "highway interchange from hell" is the one at Luik (Liège) in Belgium.... When you're coming from the north and want to switch to the highway into the Ardennes, you have to exit *on the left* twice, with no merging lanes, and with traffic thundering along at full speed.

Add inconsistent traffic signs to that toxic mix, and you have the perfect blood pressure accelerator. The guys that designed that abomination should be tarred and feathered.