Meglet Rambles On

I hate roundabouts. Growing up on the left coast, roundabouts were something that existed in British TV shows and movies.

Then I took a 5-day road trip on the east coast with a friend. We had a saying, during that trip: Round and round and round we go, where we stop, nobody knows! It appears that folks on the east coast, particularly Massachusetts and DC, are very fond of their roundabouts. Kat and I got stuck in them often, although most of the time we made it out on the second trip around.

The worst was a roundabout just outside of Boston. We were looking for a particular highway going a particular direction based on our map. As we pulled into the roundabout, there were signs for 3 or 4 different highways, including the one we were looking for. Except that our highway was listed with a completely different direction than we wanted (IIRC, we wanted to go north, and the highway was listed as east) and none of the arrows actually appeared to match the exits from the roundabout. I think we made at least 3 trips around before taking a wild guess based on the direction of the exits, and just picked one.

And now roundabouts are starting to appear here in Seattle. I’m not talking about the cute little traffic circles with flowers in the middle in cute little neighborhoods that are meant to slow down traffic so no kids get run over. I’m talking about the big, multi-lane, 4 roads in 4 roads out roundabouts. Like the one that North Bend put in to control traffic coming off the freeway and heading towards the Outlet mall. After 3 trips through it, I think I have finally figured out which lane goes to which road, on-ramp, and other road.

Apparently, that roundabout works so well that North Bend put in another one at the other end of town. At least I don’t have to drive through that one, although it did come in handy when I wanted to turn around the other day. Just keep driving in a circle till you come back out where you started but going the other direction!