Life of Brian

Today was mail the Master’s Miata Club newsletter day. Our sponsor pays for postage, so we headed over to Rader Mazda to run our 38 envelopes through their meter. Upon arrival the office manager told me their meter was down, smoked by lightning the other day. Parts were on order and it should be fixed by next week.

Plan B was to go to a post office, buy the stamps and then get the Club to reimburse us. Donna suggested we go up Washington Road to Evans where we used to have the P.O. Box. I said, “Let’s compromise and go to the Martinez one that is half as far away.” “Make it so,” she replied. We have driven by the entrance to this post office a bunch of times, but had never actually used it. I pulled in and park at a left hand building even though Donna said I should go to the hand one because there was a postal van out front. I countered that it was just delivering mail there as there wasn’t any sign out front say the post office was there. As we walked to the front door, I commented that it didn’t look like a post office. That is because it wasn’t, it was someplace called UniWay. Glad we didn’t go in and ask for stamps.

We got back in the car and continued down the street until we came to the real P.O. As we walked inside we knew we were in for a long wait as about a dozen people were in line with boxes and such. Not having to actually mail these things just yet, we u-turned out of there and headed 4 miles up the road to the Evans Post Office.

You can see the Evans P.O. from the road before you have to turn into their lot. As we got ready to make the turn I did some fast visual scanning and made a command decision, I u-turned the car and got going away from the masses that populated the parking lot. And the 68 cars waiting at the exit of the parking lot to return to the road I was already on.

After lunch as we headed home, I thought of another Post Office to try, the one where the Club’s current box is, North Augusta. As we approached this one, we both could see that we would pass right on by, as it’s lot was so full that people were causing a traffic jam on the side street to get in.

There are 2 Post Offices in Aiken and I flipped a coin and chose the southside one as it caused a more scenic route home. Even though it meant resigning myself to having a slightly longer wait.

We finally caught a break, as we left the valley to head towards Aiken I spied a tiny Post Office in the tiny town of Bath. Pulled right in as there were only two other cars in the lot. As we entered the building those 2 folks were checking their P.O. Boxes, we stepped right up to the counter.

There is an intersection on my way to work where a street with a 35-MPH limit turns onto a street with a limit of 30 and to make it “easier” for people to negotiate them they have rounded them off more. I can now take these turns and not have to slow down. This is OK in a Miata, but when bigger cars do it they still can’t keep it on the road. They either cut more off the turn and run over the persons lawn or they get their left side tires off the left side of the road. Traffic engineers will analyze this intersection and probably round the turn off more. This will encourage more speed and the cycle will repeat. What they need to do is sharpen up the radius and either put a curb on both sides of the road or better yet, a ditch.

They also need to narrow some of these streets down. The bigger road encourages bigger speeds. There is a section of road that I sometimes travel that goes from 2 lanes to four and the speed limit stays the same 35-MPH. Yet as soon as traffic hits the four lanes the speeds jump about 10 MPH over the 40-45 they were already traveling.

Wider lanes also mean less attention needs to be paid attention to lane discipline. Another bit of road I frequently travel passes through the horse/historical district of town and because of that it still has the same narrow lane width it had in the 40’s. When driving on this stretch people travel slower than they do when the road widens because they have to pay attention to whether they are on their side of the white line.

Then again if I had my way, they would only allow Miatas on the roads and all the lanes would be narrow and windy.