I’m
from Michigan, and over a recent five day period—because of a trip to Florida
and back (via North Carolina)—my wife and I drove through Ohio and West
Virginia twice. This trip was on the heels of a trip just two weeks earlier
when we helped my daughter move into an apartment in North Carolina to begin an
internship at UNC (yes, the sky is Tar Heel blue)—so four times we were on those states’ wretched roads in about sixteen
days.
Admittedly,
I’m a University of Michigan graduate and fan, so my dislike of Ohio comes
naturally, but I’m mature enough to admit that not all of Ohio and not all Ohioans
are bad. Cedar Point is an amazing amusement park, and I’ve been to Kings
Island as well. I’ve watched baseball games in Riverfront Stadium, Great
America Ball Park, and Progressive Field. I attended college in Ohio for a year
and a half. I’ve been to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Cincinnati Zoo,
and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I have friends who live in the state. It’s
not all bad. But as a traveler, this
I know: the entire state is under
road construction. I mean the whole thing.
Not only are the speed limits on the roads typically lower in Ohio and the police
force seemingly more determined to give out speeding tickets than any state
in the union, but Ohio has a massive toll road and 700 million miles of road
construction.
Ohio
has only two seasons—winter and road construction. That wasn’t a joke. I was
stating a fact plainly named on the internet. Cleveland-based Plastic Safety
Systems Inc. is one of the country's largest makers of orange construction
barrels (I looked it up on Google), literally putting millions of dollars
yearly into Ohio’s economy, while managing to keep their manufactured product
almost exclusively on their home soil. Industrywide
(not just in Ohio), as many as 750,000 orange barrels are produced annually
(another Google “fact”). Now, I’m certain that I-75 near Cincinnati, for
instance, has been undergoing road construction non-stop (except in the winter
“season”) for at least 30 years. Over 22 billion orange barrels have been
produced in that period of time, and I’m convinced half of them can be found in
Ohio since the entire state is currently under road construction. And by the
way, can anyone tell me when I-75 at Cincinnati will be fixed? It seems
inconceivable that there are construction workers who started working road crew
as young adults who have retired, never having seen the section of road heading
to that terrifying bridge over the Ohio River ever completed.
That
brings me to concrete highway median barriers. More Google research says they
are twenty feet long, two feet wide, and two feet eight inches tall—and they weigh
approximately 8000 pounds each. Since I’m guessing there are a billion of them
in Ohio (264 make up a single mile), that means there are eight thousand
billion pounds of cement barricading every driving route in the state. Orange
barrels are one thing—they’re designed to not
wreck a car that happens to hit them, but an 8000 pound weight doesn’t tip
over and fall away when a car hits it, so drivers white-knuckle their way
through the entire geography of Ohio in hopes of survival—unless, of course,
they are safely and securely stuck in one of a myriad of Ohio traffic jams the
road construction causes throughout the state. Yeah, the only thing good about
the roads in Ohio is that when driving north or south on I-77, they’re better than the
roads of West Virginia.
This
isn’t scientific, but I-77 runs through the entire state of West Virginia, so I
took out a ruler, measured the legend on my atlas, and followed the route the
expressway takes. The road should be less than 120 miles long. It’s 187. Yes,
it’s more than 50% longer than the map says it is because it winds through the
mountains at angles and grades that no one in their right mind would navigate
unless they were determined to leave the road construction in Ohio behind and
enter back into human civilization in Virginia (via an interesting tunnel
through a mountain). No one would do that drive in the winter would they? There
must be thousands of abandoned, destroyed vehicles at the bottom of mountain
overlooks in West Virginia if people really do drive that route in the ice and
snow. Seriously, I found an overhead, satellite view of the West Virginia Turnpike.
It looks like this:
The
Saturday Evening Post referred to
that 88-mile section of road as "the Turnpike that goes to nowhere." Due
to the difficulty and lives lost in its construction, it has also been called
"88 miles of miracle.” It includes Charleston, which besides its
golden-domed capitol building, doesn’t have much to look at—unless you discover
the houses hidden in the mountainsides. Other than that, there seems to be no
cities, no exits, and no signs of humanity along the turnpike except for in two
places. Number one is the “service plazas” which are basically rest stops but
are really refuges for the anxiety-riddled people who have braved the worst
travel route in the United States. People exit their vehicles, kiss the
pavement, throw-up in the rest rooms, eat long meals, and then take a Prozac
before buckling up for the next section of road maze. Every bridge is called a
“memorial” bridge named after a person I’ve never heard of, but most likely, he
or she flew off a cliff in a Prozac-induced sleep. There are signs everywhere
that say “Falling Rocks.” That –ing word is in the present perfect progressive
tense, describing an action that began in the past, continues in the present,
and may continue into the future. In other words, while drivers are grasping
the steering wheel in a death grip, maneuvering through roads that go every
direction except flat and straight, they are to look to the mountain walls out
of their peripheral vision for rocks hurtling through the air in hopes of
avoiding the pulverization of their vehicles.
The
only other place for humanity is at the toll booths. Now, I’m sorry, but
there’s no way I believe there are sane people who drive to and from home to
set up shop in those toll booths on a daily basis. Either they’re insane or
they are violent criminals on work release who inevitably will crash to their
deaths before their prison terms expire. The only other option is that they
rock climb to work to begin their shifts and rappel home when they’re finished.
The way the roads wind, I think all three toll stops are actually within a “falling
rock” from each other and the whole turnpike is simply a legislative joke to
raise money and convince non-West Virginian natives to never consider living in
the state. The toll booth workers rappel home to their houses built into clefts
in the wall or to spelunker into caves below the surface of the planet. In the
meantime, white-knuckled drivers are motoring in weaving, winding circles for
88 miles only to come out five miles ahead of where they started. They could
have hiked it faster and more safely.
On
our last trip through on Monday, my brakes were grinding and my air conditioner
stopped working. I had to turn the radio off because the only sound I could
pick up was static. I had to turn my phone to airplane mode because the battery
was draining while roaming for a signal that most assuredly didn’t exist. I’m
certain no phone company is willing to risk employees’ lives to install cell
phone towers in the middle of virgin earth, so the only thing we could do while
driving through the state was sweat and pray. Well, we made it through four
times in sixteen days, and for the time being, I love the state of Michigan to
degrees I’d never experienced in the past. Maybe the next time we go to
Florida, we’ll fly.
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