Scribe-ls

Goco80401 can be credited or thunked for this one, with his pithy remark about some of our lovely on-off ramps around town (he asserts they had to have been designed by primates on hallucinogens).  Naturally, I thought about some of my "favorites" and it is probably a pretty fair guess that nearly everyone has at least one dreadful ramp that brings on that liquid-guts feeling when avoiding it is impossible.

There are a couple of ramps that have terrified me from my very first attempts at them as a young driver almost 30 years ago.  Yes, even then these were fear-inducing whirly-rides that required a steady putt-puttin' around the bend then a hallelujah of a foot-stomping leap of faith in your vehicle to enter the screaming flow of oncoming traffic on the target highway.  Slightly less terrifying now after numerous uses unscathed, if not unscared, is the ramps from south-bound Wadsworth onto either east-bound Sixth Avenue Freeway and the ramp from north-bound Ward Road/44th Avenue onto east-bound I70. 

Anyone who's driven around the west end of the Metro surely recognizes these.  The Wadsworth-Sixth one is part of an old modified cloverleaf interchange with a huge curve that make any speed over 35 a sure bet for an unsuccessful attempt at orbit.  After tootin' around this like old Mr. Magoo in his jalopy, you have about ten feet to reach traffic speed (speed limit 65, real speed at least 75), oh but wait!  There are vehicles trying to merge off right here, too, to get onto Wadsworth.  Their drivers barely dare to decelerate at all as no-one observes the spacing rules.  Yeeha!  Once you manage the weave here, you're faced with mergers-on, as well, while right-lane-riders gunning for the Sheridan exit are threatening to push.  On a good day, you might get lucky enough to have an opportunity to hop left a lane, otherwise it's a careful balancing act of braking, accelerating and hoping.  Once you're successfully on, you've definitely had your daily cardio workout.

Ward Road and I70 is enough to cause night-terrors.  There is no luxury of 10 feet to accelerate, it feels like six feet, and you've come up a bit of a hill on the ramp. The oncoming traffic on east-bound I70 has the advantage of a slight down-grade and amnesia of the fact that thte 75 miles per hour speed limit (85 real speed!) ended miles back.  Not to be overlooked is that the onslaught usually includes at least one semi, as not all of them take the break at the truck stop right there.  More often than not, you've also one sniffing up your tailpipe as you're straining up the ramp trying to achieve something close to a safe merging speed while simultaneously trying to gauge a jumping-in point.  Yiiiiikes!  Thank goodness there isn't the added spice of a forward off-ramp or another on-ramp.  You've got plenty of time to move it, move it, move it before the Kipling exiters scream across the interstate from the left lane.   

Welcome to the wild, wild west, newbies.  It takes grit to drive our highways.  Hope you've got some!