i'm pondering freeway nomenclature, specifically interstate highways.

i was driving around, doing so in southern california gives you lots of time to ponder stuff like this, and got to thinking about freeway nomenclature. well, not nomenclature, as such, generally stretches of highway are named for people significant in local history, and numbered based on which way they travel. pretty much everybody knows that odd-numbered highways run north-south, and that even numbered ones run east-west. so i guess what i'm exploring is more the way roads are referred to in the vernacular of the regions they serve.

i've lived in dallas, chicago, and now los angeles and each place refers to its freeways differently. each place, to be sure conforms to the guidelines mentioned in the paragraph previous, but significant variations remain nonetheless. in dallas, everyone generally uses the numbers. giving directions you'll tell someone "head south down 35, and then west on 20. . ." the highways have names, but they're not really uniform. for example, a stretch of 30 is named "r.l thornton freeway" but thornton isn't confined to 30, as a stretch of 35 is also named for thornton. as if that wasn't confusing enough, once 30 leaves the city limits of dallas, it becomes "the old turnpike," i guess that's appropriate since it used to be a turnpike.

in chicago, the locals never use the numbers when referring to the highways, in fact, i'm not even sure they know them. newcomers and tourists face a pretty steep learning curve when they first show up. chicagoans are, next to texans i'm convinced, the most welcoming people on the planet, but asking for directions from a local, despite their gregariousness, is no help when you figure out that you have to decode everything they said, turn the names into numbers. this was pointed out to me, oddly enough, by my new testament professor in college. chicago differs from dallas in a beneficial fashion, however, in that names for the roads are at least uniform. the 294 is the tri-state, no matter where you are on it. same goes for the 290, which is the eisenhower, or the ike, and every other interstate highway in and around chicago. so once you learn the names, it really is easier that way, which makes forgetting the numbers they correspond to if not excusable, at least understandable.

los angeles is sort of a composite of the other two. the numbers and names are used at least somewhat interchangably, and the names are more consistent than dallas', but less so than chicago's. it seems, in some cases, as though a highway's name is contingent upon the direction a person is heading on it. for example, the 405 heading north is the santa monica freeway, turn around and go the other way, and suddenly it becomes the san diego freeway. on top of that, traffic in the area has been known to inspire ridiculously inane blog entries.

i'm dizzy, i'll stop.

feeling: a bit of a headache
thinking of: box filler
music: "make sure i'm out screwing up" wesley willis