Talk of the Town - Georgia made the pants too small July 24 2003

I know a guy with a weight problem. Granted, I also have a weight problem. But do any of us truly know ourselves? Hence my friend.

This guy will try any diet. He’s done the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet and the Japanese Diet, which is also the name of the legislature in Tokyo, where they have terrific sushi.

Not surprisingly, he’s still rotund — because he won’t give up his passion for beer. Even worse, he won’t admit to a larger waist size, which would entail buying a bigger pair of pants. So he’s also wearing clothes that don’t fit.

Which brings me to Ga. 400 and the people in charge of it. They have a traffic problem: too many cars and not enough road. They know this. Yet they keep trying new diets.

They add piddling off-ramps and onramps, a protracted boondoggle that would do any Cosa Nostra-controlled construction company in greater New York proud. They tell us it’s a smog alert day, as if we can motor back to the barn and haul out the horse and buggy. And when we’re already alone in our cars, they tell us to car pool.

They will say or do anything — except build more lanes on the 400. They even promise more mass transit. When the train arrives up here in 2025, I plan to totter out of the retirement home for the inaugural ride.

A misspent future has been the heritage of Ga. 400 since the moment it was “completed” awhile back. Because awhile back, some bucolic Poindexter at the Department of Transportation decided that the amount of cars on 400 now wouldn’t actually be on it until some year far down the road.

During summer vacation, traffic on the 400 is supposed to ease up. Let me tell you something: I’ve been out there all blistering summer, and so far, Buckhead-to-Cumming trip times rival Lucky Lindy’s New York-to-Paris marathon of 1927.

So if you ride the 400, listen to me: Get out of town. Go on vacation now. What are you doing hanging around Georgia in July? Go to Vermont. Go to New Hampshire. Go to the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Go any place where the surface air temperature is less than that required to roast a 25-pound Butterball turkey.

And if you can’t do that, get off the cell phone, an invention that has caused more mass death than the Gatling Gun. Why are people on cell phones — with a consequent wobbling drop in driver intelligence — the minute they pull out of the driveway? They were just in the house with a perfectly good regular phone right there on the kitchen counter. What is the attraction about using the phone in the car?

I’ll tell you what. It’s Drof Ovlov. And I’m not talking about the Latvian prime minister.

Drof is Ford spelled backward; Ovlov does the same for Volvo. Sometimes I’m so bored staring at the automotive derriere of the driver stuck in front of me that I spell the car’s make backwards to pass the time. Now that’s boredom.

And boredom is what lies at the heart of cell-phone culture. It used to make me batty, wondering what people could possibly have to say to each other all the time on cell phones, until I realized that meaningful and/or utilitarian conversation is not the point of the cell phone. It’s boredom killing. How much boredom? Drof Ovlov.

Amidst all this dullness, danger, heat, smog and congestion comes a new panacea, courtesy of the digital message boards that loom above the dark heart of suburbia’s traffic-clogged aorta:

“Check traffic times,” urges an electric sign. And then a Web address: www.georgia-navigator.com.

Now I’ve seen people do a lot of things on Ga. 400. I’ve seen them plug a beautification device into the dashboard and curl their hair (as well as mine, but only metaphorically), read The Wall Street Journal, shave and apply more makeup than a convention of Emmett Kelly Jr. impersonators.

But I have never seen someone behind the wheel successfully haul out a laptop and access the Web to check traffic times. Besides, I don’t need a computer to tell me that said times suck.

This at a time when we learn that the State Road and Tollway Authority has $2 million in annual surplus toll fees (100,000-plus cars a day times half a buck will do that for a bank account) to invest in a worthy enterprise.

Local worthies have four months to come up with a suitable spending plan, including 30 days reserved for public comment. Here’s mine: Laptops for everybody.

glen.slattery@creativeloafing.com


Glen Slattery, aka Drof Ovlov, lives on the Alpharetta Smog Shelf.