I Hate Atlanta

Damn you, Atlanta. You with your smug arts and never-ending assortment of things to do. And damn your constant road work and crazy drivers. For they make it impossible for me to make good time while traveling.

As if there wasn’t already enough to do in Atlanta, they just had to go and build an enormous aquarium that makes Chattanooga’s look like a project I could have done for a middle school science fair. Why? Why would they build the one thing that actually draws people to Chattanooga (other than the underwhelming Choo-Choo and Ruby Falls) and do it bigger and better? Do you realize that all we have now is Rock City? And if you’ve seen Rock City once (as countless billboards and painted barns along the interstate advise you to do), you’ve seen it 100 times. Big whoop.

I went to Atlanta (I refuse to refer to it by the hipper, more popular “the A-T-L” that the cool kids use) this weekend with one of my daughters to meet up with my sister and her son who was in a hip hop dance competition (Go, Jack!). We decided to spend our afternoon Saturday doing something Atlanta-ish. We’d not been to their aquarium before so we decided we’d go.

The aquarium was, of course, fine. It was big and nice and had a better diversity of things to see than does the one in Chattanooga. They had whales – whales! – and all kinds of neat things that Chattanooga’s doesn’t… blah, blah, blah. But I was completely irritated before we ever even got there because…well, because I was in Atlanta.

I was driving along minding my own business enjoying a nice, sunny day on the open road. Kate and I were excited to see Mary and Jack. Spring was in almost full bloom around us. It had the makings of a nice day. I even began to think that perhaps I’d get through Atlanta without getting held up in any typical Atlanta crazy traffic.

Wrong.

As I began to descend on the city, there was a lighted billboard that advised that up ahead on 75 South – right where I was going - there was road work that had closed three left lanes (a city is too damn big if there are three left lanes, by the way). My cheerful mood began to dissipate as I saw the sea of red tail lights I was headed straight toward. So, as it usually goes whenever I have to go to or through Atlanta, I got stopped and I sat. And I waited. And I sat. And I waited. And I sat. And I cursed – but internally so Kate wouldn’t learn any new colorful words.

One of the most telling things about Atlanta traffic is a story I like to tell about my experience there several years ago. I was on Peachtree Road over by Lenox Mall and it was just bumper to bumper with nobody moving and everyone getting frustrated. As we inched along, I noticed the entire front bumper (including a UGA license plate) of a car, just sitting there in the road. What that tells me is that someone was involved in a fender-bender in which the front half of their car fell off and they simply said, “to hell with it” and kept driving just so they could get home. I mean seriously – would you not get out of your car and survey the damage? Of course you would. But this was Atlanta. This guy just made an executive decision to leave half of his car in the road just so he could get the hell out of the traffic. Aaaaah, Atlanta.

Of course, on the interstate you had the typical people who thought they were somehow exempt from the road signs who just kept barreling on ahead to try and sneakily merge into the right lane at the last minute. Who are the idiots who let these obnoxious people over? I have a rule that if I leave room for you to get over and you pass it by thinking you’ve got a better deal up ahead, I will do everything within my power to see that you are afforded no such opportunity again. If you pass me when I’ve offered you a coveted spot in front of me, then as God as my witness you are NOT going to try and get in front of me when you run out of road, you selfish bastard. I get so annoyed when people let these people in at the last minute. It doesn’t even register with these do-gooders that they are enabling these inconsiderate drivers to continue to do this in the future.

Then you had the constant lane-changers who kept darting back and forth between lanes thinking they’d somehow get to the next mile marker faster if they could just identify the winning lane. At the rate we were going (which was 5mph), we were all pretty much going to get there at the same time. We didn’t all need to live in fear that someone was about to zip out right in front of us and cause an accident. Had these people not been to Atlanta before? Were they not expecting massive gridlock? Did they not realize that when they dashed into the other lane causing four or five cars to slam on their brakes that they were actually slowing the entire process down? Morons.

So, I finally got through the road work and came upon the exit that was supposed to take me right to the Aquarium. I can see a light change up ahead and only about 3 cars manage to get through before it turns red again. I’m thinking there must be a wreck ahead. But then I see another billboard. Apparently the WWE was having some kind of major event right next to where I wanted to go. While I was appreciative to not have this gathering of rednecks in Chattanooga, WHY did it have to be going on in Atlanta the one day I was there? Atlanta has a bazillion things to do - why on earth is it necessary to have the WWE in town? But in town they were, so it took another 20 minutes just to turn right off of the interstate. My blood was boiling at this point because for much of the past 45 minutes to an hour I could see exactly where I needed to go up ahead, I just couldn’t get there. I wanted to scream but had to stifle it so Kate wouldn’t learn any of the aforementioned colorful words.

So, we went to the Aquarium and it was bigger, newer and nicer than the one we have in Chattanooga. I was annoyed because people didn’t need another reason to go to Atlanta. There's already plenty to do there. There was no need to compete with Chattanooga. You won. We get it. What’s next? “Boulder Town” to rival Rock City? “Red Waters” to rival Ruby Falls? Grrrr. Why couldn’t you have just left us alone? What have we ever done to you?

The ride home on Sunday was just as bad. We got caught in the same construction going north so it took us forever to get out of the city and on our way back to Chattanooga. The good news is that because the traffic happened early in our trek, I was over being angry and irritated about an hour into the trip. The rest of the ride home was fairly uneventful – since not very many people were trying to get to Chattanooga (they were all going to Atlanta where there are neat things to do!). And just when I was thinking how nice it was to be back in a city that was more reasonably sized with the right amount of people (and left lanes), we got stuck in standstill traffic. For almost 45 minutes. Grrrrr.