The travel experience I have is a trip that I make every Monday and sometimes every other weekend. And it is my travel from leaving my dorm on campus to my house in Chesapeake. On a good day, minus traffic, it takes me roughly 30 minutes to get from campus to my house. If there is traffic, its probably a 40 minute drive. The reason why it probably takes my so long to get home is because everyone and their mother is getting off work or getting out of school and people don’t know how to drive either. Those and other reasons are ingredients for road rage, or just simply impatience on my part, but I am sure that I am not alone in those aspects.
My drive starts with trying to leave campus. I leave after my 2:00 class, so I make it to my car around 3:00ish (class ends at 2:50). Then the fun begins, trying to leave the dorm lot with out hitting students that aren’t paying attention or cars that are parked in areas where it makes trying to get around them almost impossible. But really gets me is further down 49th street closer to Colley, there are houses so the residents on the left side of the street (this is heading toward Colley) have there cars parked out on the street for the most part and those coming into campus using that street are supposed to pull off behind a parked car if there is some one coming from the opposite direction. No! people still keep on coming and almost hit me! The thing is I drive an SUV, its bigger than most trucks and it is blue, so its not like they can’t see me, they just choose not to. People also like to play chicken with my Tank (what we affectionately call my SUV), and that will be a game they cannot win.
On top of that, people also like to ride my tail once I get to Brambleton St. and I know my vehicle is kinda old but it runs just fine and I don’t need their help to move me along. Another thing that happens while trying to get out of downtown Norfolk and onto the interstate, is people not paying attention to traffic signals or trying to cross three lanes of traffic because they decided that at the last minute that they wanted to get off at some street at this particular point in time.
When I finally get on the interstate its usually smooth sailing. The only issue are those that go five under the speed limit and the occasional dump truck or semi. The trouble doesn’t really start up again until my exit. The exit I take goes straight into a construction zone. So the speed limit drops from 60 to 55 to 45 and then to 35. There will be some drivers that will still be going the interstate speed limit through the light. The street is Dominion Blvd. and when you start heading to the bridge there is a place for the right line to merge with the left. One of my greatest issues with drivers is that even though you give them plenty of space to merge into your lane, they still ride out the lane they were already in.
Once I get off Dominion and head home the flow of traffic is normal and there isn’t anyone making me want to pull my hair out. So I arrive home to relax.