Life is a Highway

"Life is a highway, I wanna drive it all night long. If you're going my way, I wanna drive it all night long..."

Oh c'mon sing it with me! You know you know the lyrics to it! This famous song by Tom Cochrane has really influenced not only my perspective of Atlanta but The Tyger's and my outlook on life itself. For example, if I hadn't gone through the divorce, I would've been taking the highway back to the west coast rather than to the good 'ol south. And if I had never taken this highway here to the good 'ol south, we would not be having the adventures that we are having this summer. I guess things in life happen for a reason and there is a reason as to why I ended up here in the first place. What that reason is, I have no clue yet.

But I digress, the real story behind this song is how we view Atlanta roads, highways, and city streets. To put it simply...THE ROADS HERE MAKE NO FUCKING SENSE AT ALL!!! In fact we have changed the lyrics to, "Life is a highway, you can get lost on it in Atlanta all night long!" Main streets have other main streets attached to it that branch out to various parts of the city making it so it looks more like a termite's trail in a piece of wood. Also, I never really thought the saying, "It's the little things that count", as being the ultimate truth. You know those little endings at the name of a street like DRIVE, AVENUE, CIRCLE, STREET, and PLACE? Those make a HUGE difference when taking down directions. For example, they have an East Ponce de Leon, West Ponce de Leon, Ponce de Leon, Ponce De Leon NE, etc. The list of Ponce de Leons go on and on and on. Peachtree is another street name here that has a looooong list. Basically, if you don't write down those little important endings, you're pretty much screwed. It took me 30 minutes to find the library when I first arrived here which is only a 5 minute drive. This was because I turned on Sycamore Place instead of Sycamore Street which happened to be the next street up. And I thought getting around D.C. was bad! Natives of Atlanta tell me that even they sometimes get turned around.

Now if we want to look at it from an intellectual point of view, the city of Atlanta is full of history that can still be seen through its architecture, railroads, and city streets. Roads here were designed to prevent horses from getting stuck in the mud which explains why the city has connected main streets to other main streets. Also, because change is slow in the south which has preserved its history, it is easier for them to just build off of other streets rather than revamping the whole city. Street names back in the day were named so people knew where they were. So street names like Mill Road, Spring Road, and Ferry Road all told a person where they were near. It is not unusual for street names to change within a block of each other or become a completely different city due to the dozens of small communities squashed together. There are streets that meet up with other streets and become other streets. Did that make sense? See, even I'm confused and I'm not even in my car!

All of this does not make it any easier for a person visiting the city or anyone who has just recently relocated here. My advice? Get a GPS unless you don't mind taking that wrong turn and having the highway of life take you on a new adventure. Hey, you never know where life is gonna take you.