I’ll say this- the Department of Transportation does a lot of things right. Would a more robust train system be nice? Sure, but given that the interstate network is what we’ve been handed from previous generations, USDOT mostly pulls its weight and makes for a fairly smooth, fairly efficient ride- especially when you discover, like I have, that they also maintain the shadowy Gray Road version of the interstate. That’s a lot to handle in and of itself, what with having to retrieve people who stop for bathroom breaks and get lost over the Gray Shoulder. I wouldn’t do that job. Not for anything.
Next to the Gray Road Network, the tailored ‘Wrong Way’ system is a fairly underrated piece of American infrastructure. It’s saved me from trouble twice and, with a sudden abdomen-clutch-wavy-bike-stop, I get the sense it’s intervened on my behalf for the last time.
‘Why do chances always come in three? Baseball, probably. The traditions of baseball are reflected in nearly every situation in which rules or regulations exist in America, insinuated, like a recessive gene, in the very makeup of the country.
In this instance, the rule of three applies to the number of lifetime warnings a traveler is granted by ‘The Wrong Way’ and, given that these warnings are only delivered in the absolute direst circumstances and only in response to situations that can be avoided by going the opposite direction, the average person rarely needs the lot of them. Most truly disastrous events have their roots in people long before they hit the road.’
I don’t think much of it, at first, this final intervention. I pull off to the shoulder, like I have in the past, and I chew my lips and second guess myself (like I have in the past). The placement of ‘wrong way’ signs is not always clear, even in mundane situations, and it’s easy to mistake a warning pointed at other drivers for one that pertains to me.
The longer I look, however- the further I trace the road I’d planned on taking and see, along it, several dozen more ‘wrong way’ signs, the more I’m sure. And rather than relief (or, along with relief) I feel a hollow sort of dread.
There aren’t many objective ways to gauge the length of a life until it’s near to ending. I’ve had my last warning, and it seems as clear a sign as any that this journey, if I choose to continue it, will be the death of me.
-traveler
