Parking, traffic jams – my adventures in driving

There is nothing like making plans to attend a big event.

That was the situation my wife and I were in a few weeks ago when we were trying to decide what time we should head downtown to try to find a parking place for Pig in the Park. Normally, we would not worry too much, parking around city hall or maybe in a nearby church parking lot.

But this year, the Downtown Development Authority, who sponsors the Pig in the Park, brought in Will Moseley, which meant parking was going to go fast. Boy did it ever go fast.

As we drove through the downtown area, I could see people walking for blocks, heading towards the Market on Madison. I decided to ride toward city hall, and if we didn’t see anything, we would go back and park at The Courier Herald office.

I was about to head that way when my wife said she thought she saw one – if not two – parking spaces in front of Morris Bank. I glanced over and saw what she was talking about. Truthfully, I believed they had to be handicap parking.

As we drove up to the front of the bank, I saw another place that I or another vehicle should have been able to park. Sadly, the driver of a big truck parked over the line making it too close for someone to safely park. It seemed to have been one of those cases where someone either did not notice how far over the line they parked their vehicle or they simply just didn’t care.

At 7 p.m., it really did not matter except for the fact that I could not put my car there. So I continued to the front of the bank where there were indeed two available places. And no, they were not handicap spaces.

I backed our car in and we made our way to the show. The field in front of the stage was packed with people all there to see Moseley. Just before the artist took the stage, my good buddy Jackson Locke walked up. He was there to film the event for TV35. We ended up sitting in the pine straw in front of the stage. There really wasn’t much room between the crowd and the stage, so we took the space that was available.

While he stayed the entire show, I got some pictures and my wife and I made our way back to our car as we wanted to beat any possible traffic jam.

Speaking of traffic jams, that is something we do not have to be too concerned with here in our small town. We just have to maneuver our way through the small jams that happen Monday through Friday between 4 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. or so. Some may know that downtown gets backed up during those times, and inevitably someone not paying attention to the traffic light will block an intersection.

While I understand that some may do this accidentally, it is infuriating to be waiting to take your turn and you watch someone – who has been at the white line waiting to see if traffic moves for them to advance – at the last second hit their accelerator just enough to get to the middle of the intersection and block it. This makes it where I cannot go straight, and by the time they clear the intersection, the light turns red and I’m stuck again.

Of course for real traffic jams, one only needs to go north two hours to Atlanta. There was a time when traffic in our capital city was not bumper-to-bumper at certain points of the day. Those are long gone.

Almost 12 years ago, my family had a reunion in Atlanta at my brother’s house. The idea was for everyone to go to an Braves game that evening. Since it was just my wife and I in our vehicle, I figured we would ride with someone else to Turner Field.

I was wrong. We ended up transporting my mother and niece, who was about eight at the time. Traffic picked up the closer we got to Turner Field. Traffic came to a crawl. I watched as a woman driving in a vehicle next to me forced her way into a small almost non-existent hole in front of me.

What made this worse was the backseat driving tips I was receiving from my mother. 

“You just have to put your signal on and get over. They’ll let you in.”

My wife turned the radio down, because for some reason when traffic gets that congested, it is easier to focus without music. 

Almost 10 years later we returned to the metro area go to a Zach Williams’ concert near Kennesaw. Traffic had not improved any. Even around 11 p.m. when the show was over, we were still crawling back to our hotel.

My favorite time riding through Atlanta now is when somebody else is driving, or I am on a chartered bus. If I do have to travel through that city – or anywhere near it – I am so happy to return to our town and remember the words said in “The Wizard of Oz” by Dorothy, “There’s no place like home.”