On the Road Again

It's been several weeks now since I made the observations that inspired this post, but I found it somewhat interesting noticing some differences between St. Louis and Louisville the last time I was in St. Louis. I got to spend a full week in St. Louis in December for the first time in several years, and it was hard not to make comparisons. This time, my observations concern some things I notice while driving the highways in St. Louis.

The first major observation I noticed was that the highways in St. Louis are much more crowded than those in Louisville. I'm not talking just during rush hour (which I generally avoided) but throughout most hours of the afternoon and the night. You can drive stretches of the urban highways in Louisville and not have a car next to you or in front or behind you for several hundred yards and that's nothing strange. But if you're driving in St. Louis, you will generally be driving in close quarters with several other cars. I always talk badly about Louisville because I say that rush hour lasts roughly 5 hours in the evenings because there's only one way to get anywhere, but I have to say that it is much easier driving the highways in Louisville generally. I noticed the crowd in St. Louis the most because you always have to be very careful changing lanes since there will be so many cars close to you. You have to start thinking about getting into exit lanes far in advance. In Louisville, you can change lanes during the early afternoon and late evening and night almost without thinking and be perfectly safe. I'm sure the size of the cities plays some role in this (even though officially Louisville is larger than St. Louis in terms of population, but I'll get into that later). However, St. Louis is also much more spread out than Louisville, so I don't know what is the true cause.

Something about the highways in St. Louis that I really enjoy (using the term enjoy loosely) is the exit signs. As you're driving on any highway, signs list the distance to the next 3 exits. I've always found this to be very helpful because if you're unsure of where you're going, the signs alert you well in advance of exits. Depending on where you're at, you'll know what exits you'll hit for the next 5 miles. In Louisville, you generally get notifications of the next exit, and these notifications start at just under 2 miles. Now there are some exceptions, namely driving on I-265 in some places where exits are spread out several miles apart. In these cases, you are told the next exit as well as the next 1-2 interstates you will hit (sometimes they are listed as 15 miles away). But generally, exit signs are given only for the next exit. I guess I always took the 3-exit notifications for granted in St. Louis.

A final thought I had was a burning questions from childhood that was answered when I came to Louisville. When you are driving in St. Louis, state highway signs are marked with the highway number being placed inside a white outline of the state of Missouri. I always wondered as a child if all states did this. Of course, thinking about this I imagined these signs would look strange in states like Tennessee and Kentucky because of their long shapes. Anyway, in Kentucky, as in most other states, state highways are shown within a white circle. Pretty boring if you ask me. Imagine what a state highway sign in Hawaii would look like if the used the state outline. Just a thought.

I'll end this with a notification that this summer, plans are in the works to take on a test of endurance and will power that should far surpass my infamous staying awake for 101 hours quest. I may or may not post a story about this on here when and if it happens, but suffice it to say that if I complete this, I believe I will join a club more rare and exclusive than those who have stayed awake for 100 hours. I'm very excited at this prospect.