Tag: traffic

Dannyspeak: Overpopulated Days

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like most people out there, we tend to have our own personal vernaculars.  Phrases that we use, mostly in private, but sometimes out in the wild, which occasionally requires explanation.  Most of the time, people scrunch their eyebrows and are dubious about the use of particular phrases, but occasionally others adopt such things, and introduce it into their own vernacular.

I don’t know why, but I’ve often felt the compulsion to write about my use of the general term “overpopulation;” it’s sat in my drafts file as a topic to write about on more than one occasion, but I’ve never actually taken the time to actually write about it.  Seeing as how my writing habits have become quite strained throughout the last few weeks and months, mostly due to work trying to suck the ever-living life out of me, I’m always trying to improve my motivation and capability to write, and no matter how bad things get, writing is the one hobby and outlet that I really do not want to let fall too far off the rails, and much like being able to run a mile at any drop of a hat, I always want to be able to write whenever I feel like it.

There are two places in which I most frequently decide that the world is too overpopulated: the parking lot at work, or at the gym. 

Being the creature of habit that I am, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I wish to park in the same parking spot every single day.  In order to accomplish that, I realize that I need to pick somewhere that isn’t necessarily rockstar parking, right next to the entrance of the office, but somewhere where I could (hopefully) reliably get the same spot on a regular basis.  That being said, my preferred spot is one floor up from the main entrance, but fairly close to the stairs, so I can traverse one flight of stairs and be at the aforementioned rockstar entrance.

For a while, it was pretty nice, getting the same spot on a daily basis.  I knew I could be five minutes earlier or five minutes later than the usual arrival time, and it would be there, and I took comfort in knowing that I basically had a consistent place to park.

But then, much to my dismay, I rolled into the parking lot one day, and there was a fucking pickup truck in my spot.  It pissed me off royally, and I hoped this was a one-off occurrence.  But then the truck was there the next day, and several other days in which I happened to be off by a few minutes.  Even after I rattled off a nice little streak of getting my spot back for several consecutive days, this fuckface would still take my exact spot whenever they managed to get there before I did.

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Those who do not use the Chick Fil-A app are subclass

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know how much clearer I can be than that headline. 

People who do not utilize the Chick Fil-A app are a class of people that are secondary or subordinate to those who do.  Fact.  Mic drop.  Walk off stage.

No matter what CFA does in the media, its political or religious stance or whatnot, it somehow manages to rise above all other non-food related topics, because simply, their food puts them on a class higher than that of every other fast food chain in the country.  Frankly, I challenge all people to find a CFA that doesn’t have a license to print money or really be able to recall at any point where a CFA closes down due to poor business and not renovation because their demand warrants it.

Go at the wrong time of day, and you will undoubtedly get stuck in some sort of line, be it inside the restaurant, or getting into a drive-thru line that literally wraps twice around the building.  In spite of the insane demand for CFA on a daily basis, I do give a lot of credit to the company for often times being proactive and always thinking on how to speed things up and keep customers happier, regardless of the fact that they really don’t have to, because people will go there for their food, regardless of if the perky teenagers that work the restaurants say “my pleasure” or not.

But just about every CFA in Atlanta has gone down at various points due to the need to renovate, or to add a second drive-thru lane, because they can all justify the needs for them.  They’ll stick employees outside with tablets and card readers in order to help expedite the service.  They’ll stash them in little pop-up tends before the pick-up windows in order to receive cash or give receipts just 20 seconds quicker than it would be at any other restaurant’s drive-thrus.

Most importantly though, they have pretty much the best app in the fast food industry, that’s easy to use, easy to register, and extremely efficient when it comes to saving time and effort.  Punch in your order and send it on, and then there’s zero need to spend time in line deciding on what to order, or to even pay for it, regardless of how many options the physical lines give you in order to save time.  The app saves even more time, and even more effort, and it basically makes it a no-brainer when it comes to deciding on which fast food joint to hit up.

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This is basically a boss of an overturned truck crash

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It didn’t happen in Georgia, but this is still a nightmare scenario of an overturned truck crash that I feel is worth mentioning, just based on the sheer severity of just how badly it owned everyone involved.  But in North Carolina, a little north of Charlotte, a Harris Teeter truck overturned, and blocked both lanes of I-85 northbound, for numerous hours.  The wreck was so bad, and the cleanup so long, emergency crews had to deliver a portable toilet to the scene of the accident, so that drivers stranded for over five hours could relieve themselves.

Let’s be real here: it’s the part where a port-o-john had to be delivered to the area that really caps this whole thing, and I think this is a good example of a true video game boss of a truck accident, if there ever could be one.  If there’s one thing Atlanta has going on for them, is that their highways always tend to have like 4-6 lanes each way, so even if a truck falls flat, at the most can only really cover up three of them, and drivers can always find ways around.

I’ve driven across this stretch of I-85 numerous times too, so I’m quite familiar with the area.  Frankly, I’m surprised at how anyone can overturn on roads so straight, but further details show that the truck swerved to dodge a disabled vehicle, and considering this stretch of I-85 has been “under construction” as long as it’s taken Northern Virginia to complete the Capital Beltway, there haven’t been shoulders on this expanse in a decade, so if a car is incapacitated, it’s happening pretty much in the middle of traffic.

Honestly though, this is kind of one of my worst driving nightmares, topped only by if I were the one in the wreck.  Being stuck in a wreck so bad, that traffic is completely incapacitated, and not knowing definitively if it’s going to take ten minutes or ten hours to clear, so you’re in a situation where you’re leaving the engine running, burning up finite fuel, and if the urge to have to go to the bathroom starts to emerge, having literally no way to alleviate the situation.

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I was hoping it would smell delicious outside

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unfortunately, it did not, even with forty thousand pounds of chicken on fire not that far from where the office is.

It’s been a while since there’s been a good story of food getting spilled onto Atlanta highways.  I think the last time I wrote anything about the subject, it was the kind of self-conflicted incident where cows got loose on I-285 and I-75 where at first I wanted to make jokes about how there was free beef on the roads, but felt sad and empathetic for the actual living cows that were probably just scared beyond measure, wandering wildly around in search of safety.

In this time, it’s not a new realization, but I’ve found plenty of evidence that I’m far from the only person fascinated by the topic of trucks overturning on roads, spilling their cargo all over the place, although I try to keep it mostly local to Atlanta or just Georgia if I can.  I don’t have my own (still defunct) site to refer to for stories about trucks overturning, as much as I’d like to be an authority on the topic.

But this also isn’t the first time that chicken has been on the menu on the roads of Georgia.  However, this is still somewhat fascinating in the simple fact that there was just so much of it.  I mean, 40,000 lbs. of frozen chicken – that’s a whole lot of god damn chicken.  I can’t imagine the sheer number of chickens necessary to get 40,000 lbs. of it, much less the fact that that’s probably factoring in the lack of weight from the parts that aren’t meant for average consumption.

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It’s not like they had a few years to prepare

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

About as shocking as political corruption: some MARTA employees believe they’re not ready for the Super Bowl

When it was announced that Atlanta was going to get the Super Bowl in 2019, I remember telling myself to absolutely avoid going anywhere remotely near the city at any time remotely near then.  Not that I have nearly as much business inside city proper anymore these days, but in case I want to go to some restaurant in town or someone might be visiting, I just need to remind myself to stay the fuck away that entire week and especially day of game.

But yeah back to MARTA being ill-prepared for the Super Bowl – is this really any surprise?  Like really, is absolutely anyone on the planet surprised by these anonymous admissions from inside?  MARTA is about as reliable as a fat person at Golden Corral, or my dog left unattended in the kitchen; put them in circumstances where failure is inevitable, and failure is a sure bet to happen.

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Pretty sure we’ve done this before

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Add it to the list… or not?  Truck overturns on I-285 ramp to I-20, spilling eggs everywhere

I’m fairly certain this exact scenario has happened before.  Same location, same contents, same results.  Without an operational site, I can’t run a query to find out, but I’m like 90% sure that this isn’t the first time that a truck has overturned in Metro Atlanta, spilling eggs all over the place. [2020 note: it did]

If that is genuinely the case, get your shit together, Atlanta.  Start spilling some more unique things on the road, and not a rerun of something that happened in the past.

If I’m wrong, then I genuinely apologize for not glamorizing this incident as I would have done for things I definitively knew were brand new incident types, like when entire hams were tossed all over I-85 south.  But like I said, I’m pretty sure eggs have been done before.

Ultimately, the bigger issue is that truck drivers feel like Atlanta highways are their own personal Gran Turismos, and such assessments continuously bite them in the ass, based on the frequency in which trucks keep tipping over, regardless of what happens to their cargo, food or not.

This specific location where I-285 and I-20 meet on the east end of the perimeter has been the place where the vast majority of these maladies have occurred, and it makes me wonder if the Georgia Department of Transportation is going to consider any sort of action to reduce all these costly and wasteful mistakes, or if the onus really does remain on all these dumbass truck drivers who keep going too fast and crashing their shit all over the place.

Either way, try again trucks.  I demand some new shit to be spilled on the roads, like a Breyers truck, or maybe some Coca-Cola trucks, for the non-drinkers to have something to drink that isn’t one of the numerous times beer trucks have crashed on Atlanta roads.

FREE BEEF 2 I MEAN 3

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Y’know, I imagine anyone that knows me and my fascination with trucks that spill food all over Georgia highways might have thought I’d have been beside myself with excitement over the news of this wild story of a truck crashing on I-285, releasing nearly a hundred cows onto the busiest highway intersection in the city.  And for like two seconds, the thought is knee-jerk amusing, but then I come to the realization that unlike all of the other times where some dumbass truck driver overturns and spills their cargo all over the road, these are actually live animals, not processed consumables, and suddenly it’s not really that funny to me anymore.

Sure, every social media comic has a one-liner or a pun or fifty to share with the internet, hoping to get anybody to notice them, but the longer this story unfolded, and the facts began to emerge about how several cows died on impact of the crash, but then many more were running around wild, likely scared out of their minds at the chaos, it just kind of made me sad.

Now I’m not going to deny the fact that I love to eat meat, and just the other day, I pigged out on a litany of beef cuts at a Korean bbq, but I still have empathy for living things, even if their eventual destiny is to become the same beef that’s on the menu at the restaurants I go to.  Frankly, I feel a little better knowing that the cows that become the beef that I enjoy don’t have to live lives where they’re traumatized and put through a wild goose chase before they’re re-captured and sent to die anyway.  I’m not saying I want all the animals that become the meat I eat to be lavished in grapes and living in luxury, but I’d rather not them go through lives of torture either.

When I looked through some of the photos of the cows running around the Metro Atlanta area, there was one photo where the cops in the background were laughing; I get that it’s a unique situation and given the right mood and frame of mind, I might’ve thought it was funny too, but today it kind of irked me, because the cow that they had managed to wrangle was a fortunate survivor of the wreck, but really it’s just being accounted for because their meat and/or their milk has some money to make for someone else.

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