I had previously posted about my commute. I terminated the post prematurely, mostly because I could have gone on to complain about it pretty much without termination. When it comes to complaining, there is no satiation point.

But there is a crowning jewel to my commute to work. It is a place so massively mis-constructed that one wonders how someone doesn’t just bulldoze the place and begin a-new. It would seems to suggest that there is no actual city planning in any way shape or form, but just random constructions companies that come forth and do as they please, willy nilly.

The place in question is called Seven Corners. I’ve sat awake in bed at nights trying to figure out how it is that it has this name, for as far as I can see there are no actual corners involved, much less seven of them. As far as I can tell, seven corners refers to a horrible little shopping center. But it has been called Seven Corners for about as long as I remember, which (considering the fact that Seven Corners was pretty much where I first moved to the United States back in (I think) the 1990’s) has been a really long time.

But the name isn’t important. What is important is the absolute clusterfuck of an intersection that exists here. Five different roads intersect here (well, four if you count the fact that Arlington blvd passes under this intersection). And any basic operation on this road is a god damned nightmare. Let me be specific.

I come in on Wilson Blvd going west. I need to get on to Arlington Blvd continuing west. To do that I must turn right onto Leesburg Pike for maybe 15 feet, then veer left onto some nameless offshoot (again, this is maybe 15 feet), to then drive onto a subsidiary road that takes you onto Arlington blvd. Seem simple? Ha. Let’s begin with the fact that each of the little trips is capped with a traffic light (I start to sound like a libertarian maniac when I get on about traffic lights in America. Traffic lights are the government’s way of imposing their order on a situation wherein individual common sense would prevail¹). Those of you following along with the map will realize that this whole process necessitates going from the right of lane of my traffic to the left, in a manner that is always a bit dangerous.

But what might not be clear from the map above is that you must actually cross route Leesburg pike twice. First you intersect the northbound half of Leesburg Pike, then you wait at a traffic light, then you cross the south bound part of Leesburg Pike. Why is this the case? Just to piss me off.

And speaking of pissing me off, the traffic lights are all timed in a way so that you will get all three of them as red. My absolute best is getting only two as red, being able to drive through the first one. It takes roughly two or three minutes to go through this intersection, which is about the size of a normal intersection. It’s not just infuriating, but it is consistently infuriating. And I know I will have to look forward to it even tomorrow.

What fun.

____________________________________________________________________________________________