The Thinking Minority

So, I'm sitting in a big traffic backup this morning.
I know, imagine that occurring in Northern Virginia. What a shock!

Anyway, I'm sitting there pondering the meaning of life or rocket bombing the 100 cars in front of me I can't remember which one, when I look out my passenger window and see a man standing in the lane next to me. Now you might think that's weird, as I did for a split second, but then I noticed that he was standing behind a garbage truck. He was the garbage man, picking up the trash cans and dumping the contents into the back of the truck. Good thing it was too cold to have the top down this morning!

What is the point of this story? Well, as is very often the case in Northern Virginia, a road that obviously used to be a rural highway has been converted into a major traffic thoroughfare by the home builders/buyers leapfrogging the old country homes out into the ex-urbs. As most of you on this Blog have no doubt seen on 29 between Charlottesville and DC, houses are built right on the highway with driveways connecting to the major road. There is/was no concept of a subdivision with such low building density.

I was on my way to the gym at 7:15 this morning on the road, and why wouldn't it be horribly backed up at 7:15? Silly me, I should've gotten up at 5:30 to beat traffic. But I digress...the point of this pointless story is that I'm sitting on this road, and the garbage truck is stopping, the guy gets out, dumps the trash into the truck, compacts it, and then hops back into this truck, drives 50 feet to the next driveway, repeat...and all of this is having absolutely no effect on the traffic flow. It's as if having a guy stopping a truck every 50 feet on a major highway is a normal thing.

I can't wait to move.